Integration Testing

Integration Testing

We will begin our adventure with integration testing. Integration testing allows you to test a real life request to your application without using a browser. Your test bundle CFC will load a new virtual application for you to test each specification under it; all aspects of your application are loaded: caching, dependency injection, AOP, etc. Then you can target an event to test and verify its behavior accordingly. First of all, these type of tests go in your integration folder of your test harness or in the specific module folder if you are testing modules.

Basics

Here are the basics to follow for integration testing:

• Create one test bundle CFC for each event handler you would like to test or base it off your BDD requirements

• Bundle CFC inherits from coldbox.system.testing.BaseTestCase

• The bundle CFC can have some annotations that tell the testing framework to what ColdBox application to connect to and test

• Execution of the event is done via the execute() method, which returns a request context object

• Execution of API requests can be done via the convenience request() method or the HTTP method aliases: get(), post(), put(), patch(), head(), options()

• Most verifications and assertions are done via the contents of the request context object (request collections)

it( "can do a relocation", function() {
	var event = execute( event = "main.doSomething" );
	expect( event.getValue( "relocate_event", "" ) ).toBe( "main.index" );
} );

it( "can startup executable code", function() {
	var event = execute( "main.onAppInit" );
} );

it( "can handle exceptions", function() {
	// You need to create an exception bean first and place it on the request context FIRST as a setup.
	var exceptionBean = createMock( "coldbox.system.web.context.ExceptionBean" ).init(
		erroStruct   = structNew(),
		extramessage = "My unit test exception",
		extraInfo    = "Any extra info, simple or complex"
	);
	prepareMock( getRequestContext() ).setValue(
			name    = "exception",
			value   = exceptionBean,
			private = true
		)
		.$( "setHTTPHeader" );

	// TEST EVENT EXECUTION
	var event = execute( "main.onException" );
} );

describe( "Request Events", function() {
	it( "fires on start", function() {
		var event = execute( "main.onRequestStart" );
	} );

	it( "fires on end", function() {
		var event = execute( "main.onRequestEnd" );
	} );
} );

describe( "Session Events", function() {
	it( "fires on start", function() {
		var event = execute( "main.onSessionStart" );
	} );

	it( "fires on end", function() {
		// Place a fake session structure here, it mimics what the handler receives
		URL.sessionReference     = structNew();
		URL.applicationReference = structNew();
		var event                = execute( "main.onSessionEnd" );
	} );
} );

We will explain later the life-cycle methods and the run() method where you will be writing your specs.

Hint Please refer to our BDD primer to start: http://testbox.ortusbooks.com/content/primers/bdd/index.html

CommandBox Generation

Also remember that you can use CommandBox to generate integration tests with a few simple commands:

coldbox create integration-test handler=main actions=index,save,run --open
# help
coldbox create integration-test help

Info Please also note that whenever you create a handler, interceptor or model with CommandBox it will automatically create the integration or unit test for you.