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

Constructing a calendar view

In this section, we’ll learn how to use our existing helpers, such as element and elements, mixed with CSS selectors, to select specific elements we’re interested in within our HTML layout.

But first, let’s start with some planning.

We’d like AppointmentForm to display available time slots over the next 7 days as a grid, with columns representing days and rows representing 30-minute time slots, just like a standard calendar view. The user will be able to quickly find a time slot that works for them and then select the right radio button before submitting the form:

Figure 5.1 – The visual design of our calendar view

Here’s an example of the HTML structure that we’re aiming to build. We can use this as a guide as we write out our React component:

<table id="time-slots">
  <thead>
    <tr>
     ...