Book Image

Simplify Testing with React Testing Library

By : Scottie Crump
Book Image

Simplify Testing with React Testing Library

By: Scottie Crump

Overview of this book

React Testing Library (RTL) is a lightweight and easy-to-use tool for testing the document object model (DOM) output of components. This book will show you how to use this modern, user-friendly tool to test React components, reducing the risk that your application will not work as expected in production. The book demonstrates code snippets that will allow you to implement RTL easily, helping you to understand the guiding principles of the DOM Testing Library to write tests from the perspective of the user. You'll explore the advantages of testing components from the perspective of individuals who will actually use your components, and use test-driven development (TDD) to drive the process of writing tests. As you advance, you'll discover how to add RTL to React projects, test components using the Context API, and also learn how to write user interface (UI) end-to-end tests using the popular Cypress library. Throughout this book, you’ll work with practical examples and useful explanations to be able to confidently create tests that don't break when changes are made. By the end of this React book, you will have learned all you need to be able to test React components confidently.
Table of Contents (10 chapters)

Using React Developer Tools with Cypress

In the previous section, we learned how to write tests using Cucumber. In this section, we will learn how to install React Developer Tools for development. React Developer Tools is a great tool to have while developing React applications. It enables you to inspect the hierarchy of components rendered in the DOM and do things such as viewing and editing component props and state. There are Chrome and Firefox extensions available to install React Developer Tools. There is also a standalone Electron app version, which is useful, such as when you want to debug React applications in Safari or mobile browsers. We will also learn how to use the standalone version with Cypress.

Use the following command to install via the command line:

npm install --save-dev react-devtools

The preceding command will install react-devtools as a development dependency in your project. Next, we need to add a script that will connect react-devtools to your application...