Change the future

Saturday 10:50 a.m.–11:20 a.m.

Getting started with automated testing

Carl Meyer

Audience level:
Novice
Category:
Testing

Description

The hardest part of testing is getting the ball rolling. Once you've picked your tools and started writing tests, the added confidence you have in making changes to your code, and the time you save in repetitive manual testing, can quickly become addictive! If you never got over that initial speedbump, or you've tried testing but it hasn't yet clicked, this talk is for you.

Abstract

Topics:

  • Picking a testing framework: unittest, nose, py.test. (Don't waste time on this, just pick one).

  • Writing your first test.

  • Unit tests and integration tests.

  • Outside-in vs inside-out testing.

  • Do I have to write my tests first?

  • Mocking: why to do it, why not to do it, and tools that can help.

  • Testing persistence code: fixtures and object mothers.

  • Measuring code coverage with coverage.py; using code coverage as a driver to know what tests you're missing.

  • Using WebTest for integration testing of web code.

  • Introducing tests into an untested legacy codebase.