Training testing

Noosfero follows a strict TDD style. This means you should create your tests before coding! This involves an education process of the developer and also knowing the best practices of testing, for each test layer. If you are not an experienced tester, please see first tutorials section.

Tutorials

1. TechTV Video Series: Efficient Rails Test-Driven Development, Class 1 of 6 and slides at slideshare
2. Ryan Bates: How I test
3. Write automated tests for your code

Running

To run all tests, run rake test. There are also others tasks, please see rake -T

To run a set of tests, just run ruby test/unit/article_test.rb, ruby test/functionals/cms_controller_test.rb, cucumber features/new_content_on_cms.feature or cucumber -p selenium features/new_content_on_cms.feature

For unit and functionals you may use -n /regex/ option to filter tests by name.

Setting up a clean environment.

Database may have some data when starting tests. db/schema.rb may be dirty. Config files may change behaviour. Uncommited changes can left forgotten code.

Take care to backup all untracked files and to commit changes. clean and checkout will destroy them.

rm .gitignore
git clean -df
git checkout .

cp gitignore.example .gitignore
cp config/database.yml.sqlite3 config/database.yml
cp config/solr.yml.dist config/solr.yml
mkdir tmp log
rake makemo
rake db:schema:load
rake db:migrate

Now you can run rake test with everything clear

Layers

Testing is done in the MVC layers. As a general rule, models are always tested, but controllers or views may not get automated tests, depending on the case.

Units

Unit tests are most important tests for your code. This ensure data is read and written from the database the way defined by the business rules.

Data creation

You should choose the method to create your data with some considerations. The most common is to share data into the setup method

Factories

Noosfero has its own simple factory system. It generates required data with a serial number for models, which you may replace or add new fields specific for your tests.

This factory is coded at test/factories.rb and have many performance considerations, providing different methods for different needs. Here comes a table comparing them:

	Goes to DB	Insert using ActiveRecord	Factory with defaults_for	Performance	Validate
fast_create	+	-	-	+	-
create	+	+	+	-	+
build	-	+	+	+/-	-

Fixtures

Fixtures are not a good way of providing test data, since they make the tests not self-contained (you have to look elsewhere to know what the test is supposed to test). Fixtures use is not recommended.

Functionals

Tests that the controller get the right data from the Models and pass them with the right variables to Views.

Integration

Integration tests sometimes replaces functionals tests, as it test the output to user.

Plain views

Plain Cucumber tests will be enough and easy to ensure things are placed on the view and brings the desired user navigation.

Javascript and Ajax views

Cucumber with Selenium tests run a browser and simulates a user doing the programmed cucumber actions. The Selenium, Cucumber and webrat versions used by Noosfero is still unstable with Selenium.

Plugins

Run rake -T to see that Noosfero already created some units test tasks so that you make run all your tests at once.

Frameworks

Both TestCase? and RSpec are supported by Noosfero.

Documentation at

1. TestCase API reference
2. RSpec API reference

For RSpec integration with TestCase? see here

References