Integration Testing Browser Extensions with Jest
This post has been migrated to my new blog that you can find here:
https://pureooze.com/blog/posts/2018-08-16-integration-testing-browser-extensions-with-jest/
Previously I wrote about how I became the maintainer of Saka, an open source browser extension that allows users to search through and load open tabs, browsing history and bookmarks. I talked about how I came up with a solution for unit testing the extension to give me confidence with code changes. I also mentioned that there were issues with integration testing that I ran into which made it difficult to test components that relied on browser APIs.
Today I am happy to report that I have found a way to perform integration testing on extensions and want to share it with you in this post. But before we go down that particular rabbit hole lets first discuss integration testing and why it is useful for validating software.
The Testing Trophy
Kent C. Dodds has written about something he calls the ‘Testing Trophy’. If you have heard of the testing pyramid before this is a similar concept — it’s a visualization of how you should prioritize the different types of testing in applications. The title of Kent’s post says it all:
Write tests. Not too many. Mostly integration.
Why does he say this? Kent notes the problem with unit tests is that they only prove individual units work as expected— they do not prove that the units can work together as a whole. Integration testing on the other hand proves that all the components in our project can actually work together as expected.
To read the rest of this post it can be found on my new blog here:
https://pureooze.com/blog/posts/2018-08-16-integration-testing-browser-extensions-with-jest/
