Integration Testing a Node Server without much configuration - node.js

I want to set up a CI/CD workflow which includes testing my server as a whole.
Using node I have a couple options such as
Jest,
Mocha,
Chai
or a different approach such as Postman/Newman.
I have tried out Jest and found it very difficult to adjust my databases such as Postgres and Redis to the mock environment. In fact, I didn't get it to work at all, presumably because of all the technologies involved.
Is there is a tool, maybe one of the others mentioned, that takes the server as it is, without any additional configuration, calls the endpoints of the Server and gives me results, which I can then use to further take action (push/rollback/discard changes)?

Related

What is a good way to to mock and spy on an API dependency in Node testing?

I have a question about how best to do end-to-end/integration testing without having to mock an entire API. I've not found any great solutions and I'm starting to wonder if I'm thinking about this the wrong way.
My situation
I have a web client that I want to test which relies heavily on a REST API that is part of our larger system. For the most part, testing against an instance of the real API service seems like the right thing to do in our end-to-end testing scenario, but in some cases (e.g. provoking errors, empty lists et c) it would be easier to mock portions of the API than to go in and change the actual state of the API service.
In other cases, I don't need to mock the API, but I do need to confirm that requests were made as expected, essentially a spy, but on an API.
My idea for a solution
I imagined the best way to solve this would be an HTTP proxy controlled by the test suite, sitting between the system-under-test and the API service. The test suite would then:
Configure the system-under-test to use the API proxy
For each test
Set up mocks only on relevant endpoints (the rest are proxied to the API service)
Exercise the system-under-test
Make assertions by reading spies from the proxy
Tear down/reset the mocks and spies afterwards
I have multiple use cases for this, one being Cypress end-to-end testing inside a browser, where monkeypatching or dependency injection is not possible, because significant portions of the system under test is not executed directly by the test-suite.
I found MockServer which seems to solve what I'm looking to achieve, but in a massive Java program that adds a lot of requirements (e.g. Java, which translates to CI costs) to an otherwise node-based environment.
EDIT: This image from MockServer illustrates one usage which matches my scenario:
My question(s)
Is what I'm considering a good approach to this type of situation? What is a good way (e.g. existing software) to solve this within the Node eco-system?

Testing express application with mongodb

I have a question regarding the different tests for a node and specifically an express application.
I am new to node/express coming from a PHP background, so have a few questions.
I know about unit testing, using things like PHPUnit, so I have read about about Jest. My specific questions regarding jest and unit testing in an application like express. Is should I be breaking my code apart more? It currently is quite together my routes are basically where all my business logic is found. Which means it's difficult to unit test?
Then with something else like end to end testing, I am looking at testcafe. For this I am really unsure how to get past my authentication and furthermore how to test on my local machine, before pushing code to production.
Full disclosure, I have a CI setup to my main branch, so I am looking to implement these tests to stop me merging breaking code to my master branch and breaking the production site.
Personally I always prefer mocha.js for testing any node app. It specifies how many test cases are passing, generates a report for those which are not passing. Also it specifies the time required to execute a code segment.
I'm also relatively new to node. I use the same stack as you (Express + MongoDB), applying MVC pattern. In Java I used to write a lot of unit tests with Spock, but right now I focus mostly on integration testing.
In my opinion routes should not contain any logic. Try to move it to separate layer - services. This way you can focus on testing logic provided by them, instead of trying to test code hidden in your routes.
For testing I use mocha.js, chai and chai-http.
My approach is to set up test database and form my tests as a sequence of requests. There is no problem with testing authentication that way - just need to correctly set up db with some user data. If you want to cut off the dependencies like database, use sinon for stubbing and mocking.
The obvious downside of this approach is testing time, but you can split tests into unit and integration suites. Run your unit tests locally and integration tests in your CI pipelines.
I'm not sure if it's the best approach, but I'm positive about the effects. Learning new technology means refactoring a lot. I have changed the structure of my project multiple times, moving logic, extracting methods and classes etc. Integration tests assure me that I haven't broken the business logic, despite having changed what's in the black box. This kind of breaking changes would be way harder to maintain with unit tests.

Best practices for testing a web app based on http calls

I've built a web app that aggregates trading and blockchain data from several API's and displays them in a React frontend(node backend)
What is the best way to implement tests to check for data integrity or when there are issues?
I am extremely new to testing and would appreciate any guidance/direction. Have gone through several testing frameworks and libraries, and am kind of dumbfounded.
You don't really test apps for 'integrity' of data as you name it.
Especially when data comes from external (not your DB for example) sources.
If you own data, you can test DB integrity, but as you say that is not the case here.
What you do though is - write unit tests (functional, recursive, end2end tests too, but what you want to do will mostly be achieved by using unit tests).
Within tests, you basically provide all kinds of data to your app and check if results are what you expect them to be (both for working and breaking scenarios).
This way, you can be sure it works as you designed it.
If at one point somewhere in future, a bug is exposed or you find it yourself. Define precisely why the bug occurs and add test for it.
When after you fix code responsible for bug, all of your tests pass, you know you are good again.
As for libraries:
"Jest" https://jestjs.io/ is go-to library for many - it's for unit tests mostly.
Jasmine and Mocha are also popular choices.
For end to end testing check Testcafe - I recommend it.
https://github.com/DevExpress/testcafe
You should also test your API with Mocha, Chai, Supertest or Chakram.
This way, all layers of your app are covered and bugs can be spotted quicker.

How to perform integration testing using Node.js?

I am writing a Node.js application that acts as GraphQL server. And I want to test if GraphQL is giving me the right results.
My guess is to make a request to server in each test and then watch if it is right or not. But I'm not sure how to set it up, how to run the server and clean the database before all tests and shutting it down after all tests are finished.
I worked with rspec using Ruby on Rails before, so I want to do something like rspec does in Node.js. Is there a way to accomplish it using Jest? And if not, how can I do something simular?
This isn't really an Jest specific question but more how to perform integration testing in Node.
The fact you're using Jest makes very little difference other than you'll want to ensure auto mocking is turned off.
Normally when writing integration style tests I'd use something like supertest to make requests and setup the database to use sqlLite or similar running a seed.
I'd recommend looking for similar tools like graphql-tester.

Automated testing node js and database

I'm using jenkins to automate the testing of my node js application? How do I test the queries to the database? How does Jenkins know to build the mongo db database first? How does automated testing work with database?
I don't use Jenkins for CI, I tend to use TeamCity, but I think your questions can be answered independently of which CI technology you use.
There is no definite answer to your questions, it all depends:
If you are looking to implement full integration tests, including querying a real database, then I would suggest creating a separate database just for testing like - mydb-test. You would have to configure your tests to use this database via config etc. In case you want to isolate your tests from the data access layer, then you need to mock the data access. This can be done by using a mock library, this will be easier to use depending on how well architected is your application code, where dependency injection IMHO is really important on this matter.

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