Testing Toolbox

I want to...

• ...give you a better set of testing tools
• ...help you test your apps more effectively
• ...give you something you can use tomorrow

Why do we test?

We don't want to be this guy...

Pros

• Feel safe deploying
• Maintainability
• Better designs

Cons

• Bad tests == harder maintenance
• Takes time
• Thus, perception of low ROI
• But what is high-ROI?

High-Level,
High-ROI Testing

gem 'tarantula' # 'tarantula-rails3'

• "Fuzzy spider" your site
• Crawl links, fuzz test forms
• Find 404s, 500s, etc
• Teach it to log in
• Set it and forget it (until you introduce a bug)

gem 'jasmine'

• "rspec for JS" (unit testing lib)

jasmine-jstd-adapter (jsTestDriver)

• Auto-run your specs on IE 6+, iPhone, Firefox, etc
• Even with 1 spec, you'll find weird IE problems quicker (e.g., syntax)

Browser Simulators

• Hook 'em up to JSTD, they become Jasmine spec runners!
• IETester (IE5.5+ in a single Windows app)
• Apple's iOS Simulator (iPhone + iPad, in iOS SDK)
• Android Emulator (Android SDK)
• BlackBerry simulator (painful)

Screen Reader Simulators

• Another type of browser
• On a Mac? You have one built into Safari
• Try out your site and see what the blind get
• Details: 456 Berea Street article

Email Simulators

• Email on Acid (emailonacid.com)
• Paid, but worth it if you send a lot of email
• Tests Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Thunderbird, Lotus Notes, etc
• See all those Outlook bugs in one place

Selenium IDE

• Testing a GUI? Or no tests? Put a Selenium script behind it
• Record your actions in a browser, make assertions
• Use JavaScript when you need more logic

Low-Level Testing, Accelerated

Pick one: "rspec" or "test/unit"

• Using test/unit?
  • gem 'shoulda'
  • gem 'mocha'

gem 'autotest' # 'ZenTest'

• Runs your tests as soon as you change then
• Leave it up on a separate monitor

gem 'guard'

• An alternative
• Does more than tests

gem 'timecop'

• Make time-based tests a breeze
• Timecop.travel and Timecop.freeze

gem 'fakeweb'

gem 'webmock'

• Easily stub HTTP interactions
• Great for testing integration with web services
• Sucks because you have to copypasta the XML, JSON, etc
• So, best used in combination with...

gem 'vcr'

• Record HTTP interactions to cassettes (.yml files)
• Replay them during future test runs
• Fast, deterministic, accurate tests
• Saves tons of time

gem 'factory_girl_rails'

• Better than fixtures
• Build objects for testing
• Powerful definitions

gem 'fabrication'

• factory_girl has a Rails bias
• fabrication is up and coming
• I haven't used it much but it looks awesome

This is what's in my toolbox

I hope I've given you something you can use tomorrow

Thanks!