Book Image

Mastering React Test-Driven Development - Second Edition

By : Daniel Irvine
Book Image

Mastering React Test-Driven Development - Second Edition

By: Daniel Irvine

Overview of this book

Test-driven development (TDD) is a programming workflow that helps you build your apps by specifying behavior as automated tests. The TDD workflow future-proofs apps so that they can be modified without fear of breaking existing functionality. Another benefit of TDD is that it helps software development teams communicate their intentions more clearly, by way of test specifications. This book teaches you how to apply TDD when building React apps. You’ll create a sample app using the same React libraries and tools that professional React developers use, such as Jest, React Router, Redux, Relay (GraphQL), Cucumber, and Puppeteer. The TDD workflow is supported by various testing techniques and patterns, which are useful even if you’re not following the TDD process. This book covers these techniques by walking you through the creation of a component test framework. You’ll learn automated testing theory which will help you work with any of the test libraries that are in standard usage today, such as React Testing Library. This second edition has been revised with a stronger focus on concise code examples and has been fully updated for React 18. By the end of this TDD book, you’ll be able to use React, Redux, and GraphQL to develop robust web apps.
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
1
Part 1 – Exploring the TDD Workflow
10
Part 2 – Building Application Features
16
Part 3 – Interactivity
20
Part 4 – Behavior-Driven Development with Cucumber

Manual testing

Manual testing, as you may have guessed, means starting your application and actually using it.

Since your software is your creative work, naturally, you are interested to find out how it performs. You should certainly take the time to do this but think of it as downtime and a chance to relax, rather than a formal part of your development process.

The downside to using your software as opposed to developing your software is that using it takes up a lot of time. It sounds silly but pointing, clicking, and typing all take up valuable time. Plus, it takes time to get test environments set up and primed with the relevant test data.

For this reason, it’s important to avoid manual testing where possible. There are, however, times when it’s necessary, as we’ll discover in this section.

There is always a temptation to manually test the software after each feature is complete, just to verify that it works. If you find yourself doing this a lot...