Book Image

Mastering React Test-Driven Development

By : Daniel Irvine
Book Image

Mastering React Test-Driven Development

By: Daniel Irvine

Overview of this book

Many programmers are aware of TDD but struggle to apply it beyond basic examples. This book teaches how to build complex, real-world applications using Test-Driven Development (TDD). It takes a first principles approach to the TDD process using plain Jest and includes test-driving the integration of libraries including React Router, Redux, and Relay (GraphQL). Readers will practice systematic refactoring while building out their own test framework, gaining a deep understanding of TDD tools and techniques. They will learn how to test-drive features such as client- and server-side form validation, data filtering and searching, navigation and user workflow, undo/redo, animation, LocalStorage access, WebSocket communication, and querying GraphQL endpoints. The book covers refactoring codebases to use the React Router and Redux libraries. via TDD. Redux is explored in depth, with reducers, middleware, sagas, and connected React components. The book also covers acceptance testing using Cucumber and Puppeteer. The book is fully up to date with React 16.9 and has in-depth coverage of hooks and the ‘act’ test helper.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: First Principles of TDD
6
Section 2: Building a Single-Page Application
12
Section 3: Interactivity
16
Section 4: Acceptance Testing with BDD

Building a Logo Interpreter

Logo is a programming language that was created in the 1960s. It was, for many decades, a popular way to teach children how to code. I have fond memories of writing Logo programs back in high school. What better way to relive my childhood than by building a Logo interpreter with React?

The application we'll build is called Spec Logo. The code for the interpreter and the barebones UI have already been written. In the following three chapters, we'll bolt on additional features to this codebase.

This chapter covers the following topics:

  • Studying the Spec Logo user interface
  • Undoing and redoing user actions in Redux
  • Saving to LocalStorage via Redux middleware
  • Changing keyboard focus

Of course, we'll be doing all of this with a test-first approach.

This chapter uses a different codebase from the previous chapters. You can find the starting...