The Beginner’s Guide to Unit and Integration Testing in JavaScript

What is a unit test?

Unit testing verifies that the code in the codebase called a “unit” (a small piece that can be isolated) behaves the way it is supposed to and the full isolation approach is employed when testing the largest component. small of an application against expected behavior. Since the term “full isolation” is used here, it implies that the developer requires the application to be isolated from external resources or dependencies such as databases, HTTP servers, or the file system. Unit tests become faster and more stable by not failing due to integration issues with these external services.

Best practices for creating unit tests

The following are best practices for creating unit tests:

  • Test cases need to run at a high speed for developers. Developers need fast and easy testing. The development team will not be able to run test cases as frequently if they are slow.
  • Simple unit test cases also lead to more accurate test results.
  • It is not a good idea to duplicate implementation logic in test cases.
  • For test cases to be deterministic, they must exhibit the same behavior as long as the code remains unchanged, and when performing deterministic tests, you must use real devices and browsers, not simulators or emulators. Without exposure to real production environments, test results are far from accurate or deterministic.
  • An effective naming convention will help test cases stand out.

Selenium JavaScript Frameworks for Unit Testing

Unit testing for JavaScript involves writing JavaScript code to verify all functionality of a web page or web application module. After adding the code to HTML as an inline event handler, it runs in the browser. Test suites are created by organizing unit tests.

For JavaScript unit tests, there are a variety of frameworks available. Here are some of them:

Node.js: Node.js and browser-based assertion library for Javascript. There is a wide variety of test runners and unit testing frameworks that can be used with this framework, such as Protractor, Karma, Mocha, QUnit, Jasmine, etc.

Jasmine – With Jasmine, you can easily write tests for JavaScript code. It doesn’t require a DOM or any other JavaScript framework, and it has an easy-to-understand syntax that makes writing tests simple.

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Mocha – The framework runs in both the browser and Node.js. Tests run serially in Mocha, providing flexibility and reporting accuracy while catching uncaught exceptions and mapping them to the correct test case.

Joke: Unit tests often can’t be very useful when running on the frontend application, so this open source framework was built to work with both React Native and React-based web applications. Setting up unit tests for the front-end can be time consuming, but Jest makes this process a lot easier.

Karma – Karma’s primary goal is to provide developers with a productive environment for testing. Where developers don’t have to set up multiple configurations, but one where they can simply write the code and get instant feedback. You can run your code in a headless PhantomJS instance or in a real browser on a real device, such as a mobile phone, tablet, or desktop.

Cypress – A Mocha-based JavaScript-based framework for Cypress E2E testing. JavaScript tests can be run in the browser using Cypress, allowing for convenient and easy asynchronous testing. Unit tests in Cypress run without even needing a web server. Consequently, Cypress is ideal for testing JS/TS libraries intended for browser use.

Integration Testing: An Overview

Essentially, an integration test is intended to verify whether the joint implementation of various program units that have been previously tested is working correctly. It is challenging to write integration tests in complex software systems due to a multitude of interconnections suitable for some specific functions.

Integration tests consist of several general components:

Develop features: write test cases

Having developed your functions first, you can start writing the test cases. The test cases are sent to the remote branch for integration testing.

Creating the original integrated test environment

A dedicated environment is essential for testing as it can provide proper monitoring, resource management, and logging. Therefore, every integration test should start in a clean environment.

Testing, Programming and Execution

New business features need to be tested, and tests need to be integrated into the CI server and triggered at development milestones, such as a pull request merge. Additionally, integration tests can be scheduled or run after the code and tests are complete.

Report on integration test results

As a result of notification of test results, the development team will receive an update on the progress so that if any issues arise, the development team can take immediate action. However, these reports need to be done through regular development tool channels like Slack or Jira for the process to be seamless.

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Integration Testing: Why Should I Do Them?

Each of the software modules are subject to component testing, but they may still contain bugs. And some of the best known reasons are:

  • APIs contain instructions on how to communicate between different components. Having a great API for your business is critical as it makes software development easier. To incorporate a user-friendly look and feel, modules typically interact with these APIs or third-party tools. But integration testing is invaluable in making sure that what is received from the API is correct and meets expectations.
  • It is not uncommon for data to change when transferred from one module to another; the programmer may have designed the module differently compared to what was actually delivered. Due to such modifications, this causes problems in module integration.
  • Manual testing is problematic because each aspect of a system is looked at separately. For this reason, developers must employ integration testing to ensure that the final product is free of bugs.

What is a mock test?

Simulation allows you to create a simulated version of an external or internal service that can serve as a substitute for the real one, making your tests run faster. In cases where you are interacting with an object’s properties rather than its behavior or function, simulation can be used.

What is the chunk test?

In case your implementation only interacts with a certain behavior of the object, you can use a stub to simulate the behavior instead of the whole object.

Simulation and stubbing in unit tests

If your program uses external dependencies, for example system calls or database access, then mocking or stubbing is a good idea. You exercise the implementation every time you run a test. Suppose that when you use the delete/create function, you are not making the process efficient by allowing it to create or delete files, and the data it generates and deletes is not useful. Also, you will have to go through the process of removing something manually every time. And again it is expensive to clean. Mocking/stubbing can help a lot in this case.

Let’s use an example. Imagine that the test writes a file to a .txt file and then the system under test deletes the file. This indicates that the real problem is not whether the test is independent, but the slowness of the system calls. In this case, you can add the response of the file system call, which will take much less time as it will return immediately.

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Mocking in integration tests

As part of integration testing, evaluate the relationships between services. One approach is to get all dependent services up and running for the test environment. However, this is not necessary. You may encounter multiple points of failure due to services you cannot control, increasing the complexity and time required for testing. You should write some service integration tests with mocks and stubs to reduce your scope. Integration tests follow different rules than unit tests. Here, you should only test functionality and implementations that you have control over. For this purpose you can use mocks and stubs. First identify which integrations are important. Next, decide which external or internal services can be simulated.

Tests: What makes one good?

To launch a successful software product, extensive testing is essential. If your software doesn’t work properly, end users won’t buy or use it. However, error testing takes time. It’s repetitive, expensive, and error-prone. Before you release your software to the public, you should spend enough time testing each component.

The following are some tips. You can’t automate every test, so it’s important to decide which ones you want to automate first. Automating the following will benefit you the most:

  • Testing often leads to malfunctions.
  • Tests that require multiple registrations.
  • A test designed to identify frequently used features that can lead to high-risk conditions.
  • Those tests take a lot of time and effort to run manually.

You should also test often and early. Start your tests immediately and repeat them as often as necessary to capture the full potential of your product.

closing remarks

You can get your web app to market faster if you perform unit tests during the development phase. Therefore, a unit testing framework that produces fast unit tests, in addition to offering compatibility with Selenium, is crucial. As part of this article, we introduce some unit testing frameworks. You can use the unit testing frameworks discussed to perform automated browser tests for your web application on cloud-based testing platforms such as LambdaTest. It provides an online browser farm of over 3,000 browsers and operating system combinations for your test automation needs. In addition, it offers top-notch features like Cypress tests, Selenium tests, Appium tests, and HyperExecute to take your test automation experience to the next level.

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