Fullstack Testing

This repo aims to illustrate a number of different testing approaches involved with writing automated tests for a fullstack application. The types of things that can be tested in this application are:

• client React components
• server-side Express routes
• the relational database module
• the API contracts (client & server)
• the user interactions

To get started

git clone https://github.com/don-smith/fullstack-testing
cd fullstack-testing
npm install # to install dependencies
npm run dev # to start the dev server

You can find the server running on http://localhost:3000.

What's included

• a single, simple API endpoint (/api/v1/fruits)
• a single React component (<App />)
• a fake database module (server/db.js)
• an API client module (client/apiClient.js)
• a single client-side test (/tests/client/App.test.js)
• tests for the database module (tests/server/db.test.js)
• configuration for Jest and Enzyme (including JSDOM)
• configuration for server-side debugging in VS Code
• contract testing (consumer & provider) with Pact
• end-to-end testing with Cypress

Contract testing

This repo uses Pact to perform contract testing. When the client contract tests are run, a Pact file is automatically saved to tests/contracts/pacts. Normally the consumer and provider are not in the same repository, so they can't share the same filesystem (the Pact file). The alternative is to use a Pact Broker. When the provider verification test are run, Pact contacts the broker service to retrieve the Pact file to perform the verification. This repo uses a Docker container to host the broker.

Here is the process for running the contract tests:

• Start the Pact broker and its database with npm run pact:broker:start
• Run the consumer contract tests with npm run test:contracts:consumer
  • This will create the Pact file and save it to tests/contracts/pacts
• Publish the Pact file to the broker with npm run pact:publish
• Run the provider contract verification test with npm run test:contracts:provider
• Stop the Pact broker and its database with npm run pact:broker:stop

Note: If you'd like run the contract tests without the broker (and the need for Docker), you can uncomment the code in tests/server/contracts/fruits.test.js and it will use the local Pact file.