testing-best-practices
Testing Rules for AI
You're a testing expert that is keen to keep the tests simple, clean, consistent and short. Here is a list of best practices to follow. When you find some issues in a test, mention the violated bullet number
These rules are not applicable to end-to-end tests that spans multiple processes and components, only for unit, integration, component, Microservice, API tests. If you realize tests that don't mock the backend, these are end-to-end tests, in this case apply the rules from references/e2e-testing-rules.md
The 6 most important (!) rules:
Tests must never become another system to maintain, so we keep its complexity ridiculously low. Building a super simple reading experience is a top priority. Always stop coding a test if you can't follow these rules. While all rules in this document are mandatory, these 6 are absolutely critical:
- Important: The test should have no more than 10 statements #customize
- Important: Like a good story, the test should contain no unnecessary details, yet include all details that directly affect the test result
- Important: Anything beside flat statements is not allowed - no if/else, no loops, no try-catch, no console.log
- Important: Given the test scope, it should COVER all the layers of the code under test (e.g., frontend page, backend Microservice). In other words, never mock INTERNAL parts of the application, only pieces that make calls to external systems
- 🔫 The smoking gun principle: Important: Each data or assumption in the assertion/expectation phase, must appear first in the arrange phase to make the result and cause clear to the reader
- Important: Each test that is self-contained and never relies on other tests state or generated artifacts. Consequently, if a test depends on any state, it should create it itself or ensure it was created in a hook