Talking Drupal #446 - Test Driven Development

Apr 15, 2024

Alexey Korepov, an expert in Test Driven Development, discusses the importance of TDD in software development and its application in Drupal. The podcast covers topics such as resources for learning TDD, adapting to TDD in dev teams, environment setup, and special tools. The podcast also highlights the Test Helpers module for simplifying unit testing in Drupal projects.

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Episode notes

Introduction

00:00 • 3min

Simplifying Unit Testing with Test Helpers in Drupal Projects

02:36 • 5min

Updates on Access Policy and Testing Modifications in Drupal

08:03 • 3min

Exploring Test Driven Development in Drupal

10:43 • 22min

Importance of Quality Assurance and Testing in Software Development

32:51 • 20min

Exploring Unit Testing, Test Helpers, and Challenges in Writing Tests

52:38 • 14min

Exploring Test-Driven Development and Community Engagement in Drupal

01:06:23 • 3min

Today we are talking about Test Driven Development, Why it’s important, and How it improves development with guest Alexey Korepov. We’ll also cover Test Helpers as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: www.talkingDrupal.com/446

Topics

What does the term Test Driven Development (TDD) mean
Does Drupal make use of TDD
What makes TDD different from other methods of Development
Do you have to change your way of thinking
What are some good resources to learn TDD
Do you have any pointers for teams looking to get started
Are certain kinds of projects better suited to TDD
How have dev teams adapted to TDD
Any advice on environment setup
Any special tools

Resources

Guests

Alexey Korepov - korepov.pro Murz

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu Matt Glaman - mglaman.dev mglaman

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu

Brief description:
- Have you ever wanted an API that could dramatically simplify the process of writing Drupal unit tests? There’s a module for that.
Module name/project name:
- Test Helpers
Brief history
- How old: created in Sep 2022 by today’s guest, Alexey Korepov
- Versions available: 1.3.0 compatible with versions of Drupal 9.4 or newer, right up to Drupal 11
Maintainership
- Actively maintained, latest release less than 3 months ago
- Security coverage
- Test coverage, would be ironic if it didn’t
- API Documentation is available, linked from the project page
- Number of open issues: 2 open issues, which are actually feature requests
Usage stats:
- 5 sites officially, but modules or sites can leverage Test Helpers without enabling it, and this usage is recommended, so the number is actually higher
Module features and usage
- Provides a new container that automated tests can leverage to perform common tasks with much less code.
- For example, you can create a user or a node with a single line of code
- You can also mock more complex operations like an entityQuery or loadMultiple call, again with a single line of code
- Traditionally, writing unit tests is more complicated because by design they run without fully bootstrapping Drupal
- That means that your test needs to mock functions or services in the code you’re testing which can result in units tests being much longer than the code they’re testing
- Test Helpers also allows your tests to leverage existing mocks and stubs for popular services
- The project page also links to the recording and slides for a talk Alexey gave about Test Helpers at DrupalCon Pittsburgh last year, if you want to do a deeper dive