Introduction

Testing

There are multiple reasons why test writing is important, especially for large applications. First of all, automation saves time. If there are no tests, an application needs to be tested manually after any change to the codebase. There are obvious drawbacks to this.

Manual testing disadvantages

First of all, manual tests are very time-consuming. If we update a snippet of code that affects multiple pages on our website, we’d need to test all of them to ensure that everything still works. Second, manual testing is prone to human error. A tester could forget to check or test a specific feature or page, and then an application would be shipped with errors that could affect users’ ability to use the app.

Automated tests are great because we can run them as many times as we need. Nevertheless, there are other problems that have to be handled when it comes to automated tests.

In this chapter, we’ll cover a few tips on approaching the unit and end-to-end testing.

Note: This is not a deep dive into testing, because this topic is so vast that it could have its own dedicated course.

Developers with little experience writing tests might wonder what they’re supposed to test, or what tools should be used to write tests.