Unit testing React - What you need to know

About 2 years ago, after I joined my current company, a colleague and I had the task to start writing unit tests for our React applications and increase the code-coverage of the frontend projects. I had no prior experience in this topic, but I’ve learned a few things along the way, including the fact that purely focusing on code coverage isn’t a good idea.

I intent this article to serve as a starter guide for developers who are new to testing React components or even unit testing in general. I won’t go into the technical details here, but I’ll point you to articles and books that I read and found useful.

I’ll also include some practical advice on how to go about testing and some common pitfalls you might encounter at the end of the article.

Unit Testing Introduction

This section is an introduction to unit tests, which people who are new to unit testing will hopefully find useful. But even if you’re already experienced, you might find something useful here.

If you want, click here to skip this section.

What is unit testing in React?

Unit testing is a testing method that tests an individual software unit in isolation. This involves verifying the output of a function or component for a given input.

For React components, this could mean checking that the component renders correctly for the specified props.

In other words, writing unit tests means that we write code that verifies that our code works as expected. We’ll go over the other goals of unit testing later on.

What’s the difference between unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end tests?

Good that you ask!

Unit tests test the smallest unit possible, mocking any dependencies the component may have.

Integration tests test how multiple components work together. These tests give a better understanding of how the user experiences the application.

The downside of these tests is that it’s harder to find which component caused the test to break. While failing unit tests indicate an issue in one particular component, one broken integration test can be caused by multiple components, and it’s not always clear which component caused it.

End-to-end test — also called UI tests — take integration tests even further by testing the whole system from the point of view of the user. These tests don’t know the insides of the system since they focus on the system of the point of view of the user.

These tests click through the application and verify that the UI matches the expected results. They are the result of automating manual tests.

To explain how these tests work together it’s easier to have a look at the infamous testing pyramid:

Unit tests form the base of the pyramid because they are supposed to lay the foundation for all other tests. That’s because they are easier to write, and it’s best to write them as part of writing code and fixing bugs.

#react #testing #programming

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How native is React Native? | React Native vs Native App Development

If you are undertaking a mobile app development for your start-up or enterprise, you are likely wondering whether to use React Native. As a popular development framework, React Native helps you to develop near-native mobile apps. However, you are probably also wondering how close you can get to a native app by using React Native. How native is React Native?

In the article, we discuss the similarities between native mobile development and development using React Native. We also touch upon where they differ and how to bridge the gaps. Read on.

A brief introduction to React Native

Let’s briefly set the context first. We will briefly touch upon what React Native is and how it differs from earlier hybrid frameworks.

React Native is a popular JavaScript framework that Facebook has created. You can use this open-source framework to code natively rendering Android and iOS mobile apps. You can use it to develop web apps too.

Facebook has developed React Native based on React, its JavaScript library. The first release of React Native came in March 2015. At the time of writing this article, the latest stable release of React Native is 0.62.0, and it was released in March 2020.

Although relatively new, React Native has acquired a high degree of popularity. The “Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2019” report identifies it as the 8th most loved framework. Facebook, Walmart, and Bloomberg are some of the top companies that use React Native.

The popularity of React Native comes from its advantages. Some of its advantages are as follows:

• Performance: It delivers optimal performance.
• Cross-platform development: You can develop both Android and iOS apps with it. The reuse of code expedites development and reduces costs.
• UI design: React Native enables you to design simple and responsive UI for your mobile app.
• 3rd party plugins: This framework supports 3rd party plugins.
• Developer community: A vibrant community of developers support React Native.

Why React Native is fundamentally different from earlier hybrid frameworks

Are you wondering whether React Native is just another of those hybrid frameworks like Ionic or Cordova? It’s not! React Native is fundamentally different from these earlier hybrid frameworks.

React Native is very close to native. Consider the following aspects as described on the React Native website:

• Access to many native platforms features: The primitives of React Native render to native platform UI. This means that your React Native app will use many native platform APIs as native apps would do.
• Near-native user experience: React Native provides several native components, and these are platform agnostic.
• The ease of accessing native APIs: React Native uses a declarative UI paradigm. This enables React Native to interact easily with native platform APIs since React Native wraps existing native code.

Due to these factors, React Native offers many more advantages compared to those earlier hybrid frameworks. We now review them.

#android app #frontend #ios app #mobile app development #benefits of react native #is react native good for mobile app development #native vs #pros and cons of react native #react mobile development #react native development #react native experience #react native framework #react native ios vs android #react native pros and cons #react native vs android #react native vs native #react native vs native performance #react vs native #why react native #why use react native

Software Testing 101: Regression Tests, Unit Tests, Integration Tests

Automation and segregation can help you build better software
If you write automated tests and deliver them to the customer, he can make sure the software is working properly. And, at the end of the day, he paid for it.

Ok. We can segregate or separate the tests according to some criteria. For example, “white box” tests are used to measure the internal quality of the software, in addition to the expected results. They are very useful to know the percentage of lines of code executed, the cyclomatic complexity and several other software metrics. Unit tests are white box tests.

#testing #software testing #regression tests #unit tests #integration tests

Why do you need Unit Testing in React Native application (Video Tutorial)?

Step-by-step guidelines of Unit Testing in React Native application. Also here is an article based on this video if you prefer this kind of content.

Was this video helpful? Please share your thoughts in the comments below!

#unit testing #react native #testing #react #javascript #app development

Testing Microservices Applications

The shift towards microservices and modular applications makes testing more important and more challenging at the same time. You have to make sure that the microservices running in containers perform well and as intended, but you can no longer rely on conventional testing strategies to get the job done.

This is where new testing approaches are needed. Testing your microservices applications require the right approach, a suitable set of tools, and immense attention to details. This article will guide you through the process of testing your microservices and talk about the challenges you will have to overcome along the way. Let’s get started, shall we?

A Brave New World

Traditionally, testing a monolith application meant configuring a test environment and setting up all of the application components in a way that matched the production environment. It took time to set up the testing environment, and there were a lot of complexities around the process.

Testing also requires the application to run in full. It is not possible to test monolith apps on a per-component basis, mainly because there is usually a base code that ties everything together, and the app is designed to run as a complete app to work properly.

Microservices running in containers offer one particular advantage: universal compatibility. You don’t have to match the testing environment with the deployment architecture exactly, and you can get away with testing individual components rather than the full app in some situations.

Of course, you will have to embrace the new cloud-native approach across the pipeline. Rather than creating critical dependencies between microservices, you need to treat each one as a semi-independent module.

The only monolith or centralized portion of the application is the database, but this too is an easy challenge to overcome. As long as you have a persistent database running on your test environment, you can perform tests at any time.

Keep in mind that there are additional things to focus on when testing microservices.

• Microservices rely on network communications to talk to each other, so network reliability and requirements must be part of the testing.
• Automation and infrastructure elements are now added as codes, and you have to make sure that they also run properly when microservices are pushed through the pipeline
• While containerization is universal, you still have to pay attention to specific dependencies and create a testing strategy that allows for those dependencies to be included

Test containers are the method of choice for many developers. Unlike monolith apps, which lets you use stubs and mocks for testing, microservices need to be tested in test containers. Many CI/CD pipelines actually integrate production microservices as part of the testing process.

Contract Testing as an Approach

As mentioned before, there are many ways to test microservices effectively, but the one approach that developers now use reliably is contract testing. Loosely coupled microservices can be tested in an effective and efficient way using contract testing, mainly because this testing approach focuses on contracts; in other words, it focuses on how components or microservices communicate with each other.

Syntax and semantics construct how components communicate with each other. By defining syntax and semantics in a standardized way and testing microservices based on their ability to generate the right message formats and meet behavioral expectations, you can rest assured knowing that the microservices will behave as intended when deployed.

Ways to Test Microservices

It is easy to fall into the trap of making testing microservices complicated, but there are ways to avoid this problem. Testing microservices doesn’t have to be complicated at all when you have the right strategy in place.

There are several ways to test microservices too, including:

• Unit testing: Which allows developers to test microservices in a granular way. It doesn’t limit testing to individual microservices, but rather allows developers to take a more granular approach such as testing individual features or runtimes.
• Integration testing: Which handles the testing of microservices in an interactive way. Microservices still need to work with each other when they are deployed, and integration testing is a key process in making sure that they do.
• End-to-end testing: Which⁠—as the name suggests⁠—tests microservices as a complete app. This type of testing enables the testing of features, UI, communications, and other components that construct the app.

What’s important to note is the fact that these testing approaches allow for asynchronous testing. After all, asynchronous development is what makes developing microservices very appealing in the first place. By allowing for asynchronous testing, you can also make sure that components or microservices can be updated independently to one another.

#blog #microservices #testing #caylent #contract testing #end-to-end testing #hoverfly #integration testing #microservices #microservices architecture #pact #testing #unit testing #vagrant #vcr

Interaction Testing with React Testing Library

Testing is complicated. I’ve certainly never been good at it. For the longest time, I’ve only been focused on basic function input-output unit tests. Why? Because they were easy — you didn’t need to render HTML, you didn’t need to query DOM elements, you didn’t need to interact with said DOM elements. But of course, React component testing is a necessity for any mature codebase. And it finally came time for me to sit down and figure it out.

That’s when I discovered React Testing Library. And suddenly, everything seemingly became much simpler. All the complexities that I’ve encountered, but not understood, that made me put off React component testing disappeared. Hopefully, the same will happen for you.

#react-testing-library #unit-testing #react #jest #interaction-testing