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Mastering React Test-Driven Development
Mastering React Test-Driven Development

Mastering React Test-Driven Development: Build rock-solid, well-tested web apps with React, Redux and GraphQL

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Mastering React Test-Driven Development

First Steps with Test-Driven Development

This book follows a simple format: it's a walk-through of building React applications using a test-driven approach. We'll touch on many different parts of the React experience, including building forms, composing interfaces, and animating elements. We'll also integrate React Router, Redux, and GraphQL, all guided by tests. The focus isn't on how these features of React work, but rather on how to test them and make sure you're using them with confidence.

Modern JavaScript programmers rely heavily on packages that other people have developed. This allows us to concentrate on innovating, not reinventing, the wheel. The downside, however, is that we don't always have a full understanding of the technologies we’re dealing with. We simply don't need to learn them.

Among other things, Test-Driven Development...

Technical requirements

Later in this chapter, you'll be required to install Node Package Manager (npm) together with a whole host of packages. You'll want to ensure you have a machine capable of running the Node.js environment.

You'll also need access to the command line.

In addition, you should choose a good editor or Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to work with your code.

Creating a new React project from scratch

There's a standard template for creating React apps: the create-react-app application template. This includes some standard dependencies and boilerplate code that all React applications need. However, it also contains some extra items such as favicon.ico, a sample logo, and CSS files. While these are undoubtedly useful, having them here at the very start of a project is at odds with one of the test-driven developer's core principles: You Ain't Gonna Need It (YAGNI).

This principle says that you should hold off adding anything to your project until you're really sure that it's necessary. Perhaps that's when your team adds a user story for it into the iteration, or maybe it's when a customer asks for it. Until then, YAGNI.

It's a theme that runs throughout this book and we'll start right now by...

Displaying data with your first test

The Git tag for this section is appointment-first-name.

In this section, we'll discover the TDD cycle for the first time.

We'll start our application by building out an appointment view. We won't get very far; the tests we'll create in this chapter will simply display the customer who made the appointment. As we do so, we'll discuss the TDD process in detail.

We'll build a React functional component called Appointment. It is used for displaying the details of a single appointment in our system. The component will be passed in a data structure that represents Appointment, which we can imagine looks a little something like this:

{
customer: { firstName: 'Ashley', lastName: 'Jones', phoneNumber: '(123) 555-0123' },
stylist: 'Jay Speares',
startsAt: '2019-02-02 09:30...

Refactoring your work

The next step of the TDD cycle is to refactor your work. This step is often the hardest, because our natural impulse can be to get straight into the next feature. Chasing green, as I like to call it: building more and more functionality is much more exciting. Refactoring, however, is much more zen.

The rule "more haste; less speed" applies to coding, just as in many other areas of life. If you skip the refactoring phase, your code quality will deteriorate. If you develop a habit of skipping refactoring, your code base will soon become difficult to work with.

It takes a lot of personal discipline to consistently refactor, but you will reap the rewards of a code base that remains maintainable as it ages.

Right now, we have some repeated code between our two tests. Let's fix that.

Test code needs as much care and attention as production code....

Writing great tests

The first test now looks like this:

it('renders the customer first name', () => {
customer = { firstName: 'Ashley' };
render(<Appointment customer={customer} />);
expect(container.textContent).toMatch('Ashley');
});

This is concise and clearly readable.

A good test has three distinct sections:

  • Arrange: Sets up test dependencies
  • Act: Executes production code under test
  • Assert: Checks expectations are met

A great test is not just good but is also the following:

  • Short
  • Descriptive
  • Independent of other tests
  • Has no side-effects

Red, green, refactor

We’ve covered a lot of ground, and we have gone into excruciating detail for a very simple test. All of the ground...

Rendering lists and detail views

The Git tag for this section is appointments-day-view.

So far, we’ve seen a great deal of test-driven development, but not much of React. In this section, we’ll take what we’ve learned about TDD and apply it to learning more React.

Our app at the moment just displays a single thing—a customer’s name. Now, we'll extend it so that we have a view of all appointments that are happening today.

Let's do a little more up-front design. We've got an Appointment component that takes an appointment and displays it. We can build an AppointmentsDayView component around it that takes an array of appointment objects and displays them as a list. It also displays a single Appointment component at any one time, whichever appointment is currently selected. The user can click on an Appointment and it will open up that...

Summary

One of the many wonderful things about test-driven development is that it’s teachable. Tests act like a safety harness in our learning: we can build little blocks of understanding, building on top of each other, up and up to ever-greater heights, without fear of falling.

In this chapter, you've learned a lot of the test-driven development experience: the red-green-refactor cycle, triangulation, and Arrange, Act, Assert. You've also learned some design principles such as DRY and YAGNI.

While this is a great start, the journey has only just begun. Coming up next, we'll look at test-driving React forms and building complex user interface designs with our tests acting as scaffold.

Exercises

The Git tag for this section is chapter-1-exercises.
  • Rename Appointment.js and Appointment.test.js to AppointmentsDayView.js and AppointmentsDayView.test.js. While it's fine to include multiple components in one file if they form a hierarchy, you should always name the file after the root component for that hierarchy.
  • Complete the Appointment component by displaying the following fields on the page. You should use a table HTML element to give the data some visual structure. This shouldn't affect how you write your tests:
    • Customer last name, using the lastName field
    • Customer telephone number, using the phoneNumber field
    • Stylist name, using the stylist field
    • Salon service, using the service field
    • Appointment notes, using the notes field
  • Add a heading to Appointment to make it clear which appointment time is being viewed.
  • There is some repeated sample data...

Further learning

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Key benefits

  • Learn the TDD process using the React framework
  • Build complex, real-world applications with a pragmatic approach to TDD
  • Use Cucumber for acceptance and BDD testing, bringing TDD to the wider team

Description

Many programmers are aware of TDD but struggle to apply it beyond basic examples. This book teaches how to build complex, real-world applications using Test-Driven Development (TDD). It takes a first principles approach to the TDD process using plain Jest and includes test-driving the integration of libraries including React Router, Redux, and Relay (GraphQL). Readers will practice systematic refactoring while building out their own test framework, gaining a deep understanding of TDD tools and techniques. They will learn how to test-drive features such as client- and server-side form validation, data filtering and searching, navigation and user workflow, undo/redo, animation, LocalStorage access, WebSocket communication, and querying GraphQL endpoints. The book covers refactoring codebases to use the React Router and Redux libraries. via TDD. Redux is explored in depth, with reducers, middleware, sagas, and connected React components. The book also covers acceptance testing using Cucumber and Puppeteer. The book is fully up to date with React 16.9 and has in-depth coverage of hooks and the ‘act’ test helper.

Who is this book for?

The target audience for this book is JavaScript developers who are looking to implement test-driven and behavior-driven approaches for their React applications.

What you will learn

  • Build test-driven applications using React 16.9+ and Jest
  • Build complete web applications using a variety of HTML input elements
  • Understand the different types of test double and when to apply them
  • Test-drive the Integration of libraries such as React Router, Redux, and Relay (GraphQL)
  • Learn when to be pragmatic and how to apply TDD shortcuts
  • Test-drive interaction with browser APIs including fetch and WebSocket
  • Use Cucumber.js and Puppeteer to build BDD-style acceptance tests for your applications
  • Build and test async Redux code using redux-saga and expect-redux

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Length: 496 pages
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Language : English
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Publication date : May 03, 2019
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Table of Contents

20 Chapters
Section 1: First Principles of TDD Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
First Steps with Test-Driven Development Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Test-driving Data Input with React Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Exploring Test Doubles Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Creating a User Interface Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Section 2: Building a Single-Page Application Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Humanizing Forms Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Filtering and Searching Data Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Test-driving React Router Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Test-driving Redux Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Test-driving GraphQL Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Section 3: Interactivity Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Building a Logo Interpreter Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Adding Animation Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Working with WebSockets Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Section 4: Acceptance Testing with BDD Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Writing Your First Acceptance Test Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Adding Features Guided by Acceptance Tests Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Understanding TDD in the Wider Testing Landscape Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Other Books You May Enjoy Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

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Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon 4.6
(12 Ratings)
5 star 75%
4 star 8.3%
3 star 16.7%
2 star 0%
1 star 0%
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Amazon Customer Apr 12, 2021
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
good
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Juliana Dec 17, 2020
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
It's an essencial book for learn and also be confident with TDD. With a well paced approach, the book guides you to best practices while testing and show many possibles React TDD scenarios. Definitely a book to read begin to end if you are a TDD beginner.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
窪田 昌二 Aug 14, 2022
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
このreact本は、reactを知りつくした著者がすごく丁寧にreactの開発手順を書いてくれていると思いました。まだ途中ですが、十分私には役に立っています。もっとも感動したのは、redux-sagaです。最初、全然分からなくて、何故こんなややこしいことするのだろう。非同期でなくてもいいから簡単な方法でまず書いて欲しいと思っていました。しかし、ソースコードを見て段々分かってくるとこれが一番簡単な方法であることが分かりました。redux-sagaについてはネットでもあまり情報がありませんのでこの本のソースコードだけが頼りでした。今はreactがより好きになりました。著者の方、ありがとうございます!
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Alexandre PINON Jan 12, 2021
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Great book with all steps covered. Excellent even for absolute TDD beginners.Also a good book to discover on how to use react associated libraries (redux, graphql, react router).Recommended to learn testing react.May need to supply with some research to better understand some of the libraries used.The best part: exercices and solutions on github
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Valentyn Solovyov Jan 26, 2020
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Being a seasoned react developer I found a lot of new information about testing react applications in all flavors.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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