Tests¶

We use functional testing to test SHEBANQ.

We do not have set up unit testing (yet). A good candidate for unit testing would be the python files in the modules directory, because nearly all the business logic on the server is located there. The controllers are very lean, and delegate all their work to them.

However, such unit-testing leaves out many things that are needed for a proper working SHEBANQ:

• database layer
• views
• translation from URL to functions as defined by the framework
• mechanics of the browser
• javascript code

A few of these could be covered by integration tests, but if we really want to test the proper functioning of the website, we need functional tests.

SHEBANQ has been working well from 2013 till 2021, but the update in autumn 2021 involves a massive refactoring.

So far, we did not use any testing framework. Still, at the module level, everything seems to work well, even after the refactoring. We have observed that by intensely visiting the website and verifying that every interaction with it works as expected.

The biggest gains lie in the automation of visiting the website, and this is exactly functional testing.

There is a framework for that, Selenium, which works with the concept of a browser driver. It has a Python interface, and it can work with Safari out of the box, without installing something extra.

In order to organize a massive amount of tests, we use the popular test framework PyTest)

There is documentation on individual tests, see individual test scripts.

If you have followed the hint in operation you can run tests by

shb test arguments

which will resolve to

cd ~/github/etcbc/shebanq
python3 build.py tests arguments

This will in turn resolve to

cd ~/github/etcbc/shebanq
pytest ftests arguments

where arguments are options to feed to pytest (do pytest --help to see which options you've got).