Test & Code

Latest Episodes:

150: A Practical Testing Strategy Apr 15, 2021

Show notes

Coming up with a testing strategy doesn't have to be stressful. Prioritizing features to test, and generating test cases for each feature can be fairly quick and painless. This episode covers a strategy for both that can be applied to many types of software.

149: I don't test my code, "crappy Python" is all I write - Corey Quinn Mar 30, 2021

Show notes

Corey Quinn is the Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group. He's also a podcaster and writes a newsletter. And he also automates things with Python. But he doesn't write tests. Let's find out why.

Reason for the interview. Rough summary of a twitter conversation:

Corey: What podcasts should I try to get an invite onto?
ToonArmyCaptain: Python Bytes, Test & Code, Talk Python
Corey: But... I don't test my code, "crappy Python" is all I write, and I'd feel like a giant imposter. So yeah, I'd be game. link
So here we are.

This diagram is referenced in the show, the Last Week In AWS Newsletter Production Pipeline.

Special Guest: Corey Quinn.

Links:

Last Week in AWS

148: Coverage.py and testing packages Mar 12, 2021

Show notes

How do you test installed packages using coverage.py?

Also, a couple followups from last week's episode on using coverage for single file applications.

Links:

147: Testing Single File Python Applications/Scripts with pytest and coverage Mar 05, 2021

Show notes

Have you ever written a single file Python application or script?
Have you written tests for it?
Do you check code coverage?

This is the topic of this weeks episode, spurred on by a listener question.

The questions:

For single file scripts, I'd like to have the test code included right there in the file. Can I do that with pytest?
If I can, can I use code coverage on it?

The example code discussed in the episode: script.py

def foo(): return 5 def main(): x = foo() print(x) if __name__ == '__main__': # pragma: no cover main() ## test code # To test: # pip install pytest # pytest script.py # To test with coverage: # put this file (script.py) in a directory by itself, say foo # then from the parent directory of foo: # pip install pytest-cov # pytest --cov=foo foo/script.py # To show missing lines # pytest --cov=foo --cov-report=term-missing foo/script.py def test_foo(): assert foo() == 5 def test_main(capsys): main() captured = capsys.readouterr() assert captured.out == "5\n"

Suggestion by @cfbolz if you need to import pytest:

if __name__ == '__main__': # pragma: no cover main() else: import pytest

146: Automation Tools for Web App and API Development and Maintenance - Michael Kennedy Feb 28, 2021

Show notes

Building any software, including web apps and APIs requires testing.
There's automated testing, and there's manual testing.

In between that is exploratory testing aided by automation tools.

Michael Kennedy joins the show this week to share some of the tools he uses during development and maintenance.

We talk about tools used for semi-automated exploratory testing.
We also talk about some of the other tools and techniques he uses to keep Talk Python Training, Talk Python, and Python Bytes all up and running smoothly.

We talk about:

Postman
ngrok
sitemap link testing
scripts for manual processes
using failover servers during maintenance, redeployments, etc
gitHub webhooks and scripts to between fail over servers and production during deployments automatically
floating IP addresses
services to monitor your site: StatusCake, BetterUptime
the affect of monitoring on analytics
crash reporting: Rollbar, Sentry
response times
load testing: Locus

Links:

145: For Those About to Mock - Michael Foord Feb 18, 2021

Show notes

A discussion about mocking in Python with the original contributor of unittest.mock, Michael Foord.

Of course we discuss mocking and unittest.mock.

We also discuss:

testing philosophy
unit testing and what a unit is
TDD
where Michael's towel is, and what color

Micheal was instrumental in the building of testing tools for Python, and continues to be a pragmatic source of honest testing philosopy in a field that has a lot of contradictory information.

Links:

144: TDD in Science - Martin Héroux Feb 12, 2021

Show notes

Test Driven Development, TDD, is not easy to incorporate in your daily development.

Martin and Brian discuss TDD and testing and Martin's experience with testing, TDD, and using it for code involved with scientific research.

We discuss lots of topics around this, including:

What is TDD?
Should research software be tested in order to be trusted?
Time pressure and the struggle to get code done quickly. How do you make time for tests also?
Is testing worth it for code that will not be reused?
Sometimes it's hard to know how to test something.
Maybe people should learn to test alongside learning how to code.
A desire for a resource of testing concepts for non-CS people.
Are the testing needs and testing information needs different in different disciplines?
- Biology, Physics, Astrophysics, etc. Do they have different testing needs?
- Do we need a "how to test" resource for each?

Special Guest: Martin Héroux.

Links:

Joy Division Album Cover
episode 140: Testing in Scientific Research and Academia - Martin Héroux — Martin's previous episode.

143: pytest markers - Anthony Sottile Feb 07, 2021

Show notes

Completely nerding out about pytest markers with Anthony Sottile.

Some of what we talk about:

Running a subset of tests with markers.
Using marker expressions with and, or, not, and parentheses.
Keyword expressions also can use and, or, not, and parentheses.
Markers and pytest functionality that use mark, such as parametrize, skipif, etc.
Accessing markers with itermarkers and get_closest_marker through item.
Passing values, metadata through markers to fixtures or hook functions.

Links:

Registering markers
slow marker example in pytest documentation — Control skipping of tests according to command line option
pytest-repeat · PyPI
source code for pytest-repeat
Working with custom markers — pytest documentation
Using -k expr to select tests based on their name
Marker revamp and iteration, Historical Notes — pytest documentation

142: MongoDB - Mark Smith Jan 25, 2021

Show notes

MongoDB is possibly the most recognizable NoSQL document database.
Mark Smith, a developer advocate for MongoDB, answers my many questions about MongoDB.
We cover some basics, but also discuss some advanced features that I never knew about before this conversation.

Special Guest: Mark Smith.

Links:

141: Visual Testing - Angie Jones Dec 30, 2020

Show notes

Visual Testing has come a long way from the early days of x,y mouse clicks and pixel comparisons. Angie Jones joins the show to discuss how modern visual testing tools work and how to incorporate visual testing into a complete testing strategy.

Some of the discussion:

Classes of visual testing:
- problems with pixel to pixel testing
- DOM comparisons, css, html, etc.
- AI driven picture level testing, where failures look into the DOM to help describe the problem.
Where visual testing fits into a test strategy.
Combining "does this look right" visual testing with other test workflows.
"A picture is worth a thousand assertions" - functional assertions built into visual testing.
Baselining pictures in the test workflow.

Also discussed:

automation engineer
Test Automation University

Links:

Test Automation University

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