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

Changing keyboard focus

The Git tag for this section is focus.

The user of our application will, most of the time, be typing in the prompt at the bottom-right of the screen. It would be a great help to them if they could see the cursor already positioned there. We should do this after launching the app for the first time, and when another element—such as the name text field or the menu buttons—steals focus.

React doesn't support setting focus, so we need to use a ref on our components and then drop into the DOM API.

We'll do this via a Redux reducer. It will have two actions: PROMPT_FOCUS_REQUEST and PROMPT_HAS_FOCUSED. Any of the React components in our application will be able to dispatch the first action. The Prompt component will "listen" for it and then dispatch the second, once it has focused.

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