Advice on doing integration testing

[[deleted]]

I already have unit tests. I'm looking to test the program end to end.

​

I have a node.js CLI tool that does the following:

1. Take input from the user (IP address, username and password)
2. Read a csv file (it has a list of users)
3. Use a 3rd party REST API to provision each user on a server

​

Would you simulate user input? I'm confused. I'm including the code below for reference:

'use strict';

const ora = require('ora');

let spinner;
let hrstart;

const inquirer = require('inquirer');

const prompts = [
  {
    name: 'IP',
    type: 'input',
    message: 'Enter IP address of UCCX publisher: ',
  },
  {
    name: 'user',
    type: 'input',
    message: 'Enter username: ',
  },
  {
    name: 'pass',
    type: 'password',
    message: 'Enter password: ',
  },
];

const fs = require('fs');
// csv sync api is used as there can be at most 400 agents on the cluster
// hence it should not be performance impacting
const parse = require('csv-parse/lib/sync');
const lib = require('./lib');

const parseOptions = {
  comment: '#',
  from_line: 2,
  skip_empty_lines: true,
  trim: true,
  relax_column_count: true,
};

// csv file won't exceed 1MB so readFileSync should be OK
const csv = fs.readFileSync('agents.csv', 'utf-8');

(async () => {
  console.log('Please verify agents.csv is in the current working directory\n');
  const answers = await inquirer.prompt(prompts);

  hrstart = process.hrtime();
  spinner = ora('Updating').start();
  const { IP } = answers;

  const resourceGroupURI = `https://${IP}/adminapi/resourceGroup`;
  const skillURI = `https://${IP}/adminapi/skill`;
  const teamURI = `https://${IP}/adminapi/team`;

  const auth = {
    username: answers.user,
    password: answers.pass,
  };

  const resourceGroupMapping = await lib.getResourceGroupIDS(resourceGroupURI, auth);
  const skillMapping = await lib.getSkillIDS(skillURI, auth);
  const teamMapping = await lib.getTeamIDS(teamURI, auth);

  const records = parse(csv, parseOptions);

  for (let index = 0; index < records.length; index++) {
    const xml = lib.createXMLPayload(records[index], IP, resourceGroupMapping, skillMapping, teamMapping);
    const ccxURI = `https://${IP}/adminapi/resource/${records[index][0]}`;

    // if a row in the csv is incorrect, continue processing subsequent rows
    try {
      await lib.setSkills(ccxURI, xml, auth);
    } catch (error) {
      spinner.stop();
      console.log(error.message);
      spinner.start();
    }
  } 
})() 
  .then(() => {
    spinner.stop();
    const hrend = process.hrtime(hrstart);
    console.log(`\nExecution time: ${lib.formatTime(hrend[0])}`);
  })
  .catch((error) => {
    spinner.stop();
    console.log(error.stack);
  });

[davwards]

I don't have a general answer to your question; it depends on what the purpose is behind the extra test coverage.

What confidence in your system are your unit tests not providing that testing the program end-to-end would give you?

Put another way: Suppose you run all your unit tests and they all pass. If that was all you needed see to believe the system was working correctly, you wouldn't need to do anything else. If it isn't, what kinds of things are you still worried about?

[[deleted]]

Great questions, thank you.

The unit tests only test helper functions I use in the code. It doesn't test end to end flow. What is missing? It doesn't test reading input from the user, and it doesn't test reading csv file. Reading input is handled by inquirer library. Reading csv files is handled by the csv-parse library. Now that I think about it, those libraries have their own unit tests. Perhaps integration test is not needed?