CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptunit-testingjasminekarma-jasmineend-to-end
xetra11
xetra11

Reputation: 8875

JavaScript Unit Test or End to End Test

At the moment I try to work with my dev-teammates on some modular system for our javascript solutions. Because we're able to start afresh, we'd like to do it right this time - with tests!

We found Jasmine and Karma for our Unit Tests and Selenium/Nightwatch for our End-to-End tests.

While I was writing unit tests for those components of the system which never touched any DOM through jQuery I was good to go. But one day I came along some components which manipulates the DOM. So far so good. I managed to test them as well thanks to Jasmine-jQuery. Until this point I was sure to still be within the boundaries of Unit-Testing.

Yesterday though, I was sitting in front of a component which will make a navigation bar sticky (or fixed) as soon as the user is about to scroll the webpage down.

I wanted to test this functionality with Jasmine-jQuery again. What I did was - I mocked the users scrolling with "window.scrollTo(0, 2000)" and then checked if the attributes of those navigation bar have been changed.

The Issue:

My teamleader put me on hold because I have stepped over to the domain for End-To-End tests because I needed to mock browser functionality.

My Questions: Is this really the case? In my optinion an End-To-End test should test the orchestration of several functionalities of a system (like ours) within a productive environment. Therefore User-Stories would be the layer I would test with End-To-End tests. Check if the path a user has to go to login and write an article (for example) works the way as intended. But checking if a javascript component will successfully add/remove attributes to the DOM after some event (like the scroll event) happened - should be a unit test still.

I'm an apprentice developer - I respect the experience of my teamleader - but I still want to make completely sure that things will be done the right way.

So I ask you if you might tell me when Unit-Testing ends and when End-To-End tests begin when writing JavaScript and manipulating the DOM.

Some teammate explained to me that it might be a good way to realize if its a E2E Test specific function if you check how critical a malfunction would affect user experience. But only if you really struggle between unit-testing and E2E. Then you should ask yourself "Would a fail result in a really bad user experience or will only some error be thrown in the console and a little picture wouldn't be loaded properly".

Upvotes: 4

Views: 2297

Answers (2)

andreasonny83
andreasonny83

Reputation: 1211

Here you can find a damn good explanation on the difference between tests: What's the difference between unit, functional, acceptance, and integration tests?. I think Selenium with WebDriver is the best solution for testing E2E. If you're using AngularJS, a very good solution is using Protractor (https://angular.github.io/protractor/#/).

Hope this can help you

Upvotes: 1

Daniel Kobe
Daniel Kobe

Reputation: 9825

Check out this article http://www.itaware.eu/2012/10/19/angularjs-unit-tests-and-end-to-end-tests/ . It deals with Angular specifically but clarifies on the difference between the two. Your team leader is definitely right, its not the fact that your manipulating the DOM that makes it an E2E type tests, its the fact that your simulating user interface.

Upvotes: 0

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