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Acceptance testing for the Moodle App

From MoodleDocs

This is only a proposal, MDL-63977, and is not yet available in Moodle. Please contact sam marshall if you have any queries and do not use this information for anything yet!

From Moodle 3.7 if this change is accepted it will be possible to write Behat tests for mobile app features.

Summary

It is now possible to create Behat tests that carry out automated functionality testing on the mobile app.

By default, these do not run as part of a normal Behat run. This page tells you how to run the tests, and how to write them.

A key point is that these tests for some parts of the mobile app (and for its plugins) are included within the Moodle codebase, not within the app codebase, because they are run using the Moodle Behat infrastructure..

Running Behat tests for the mobile app

Set up a mobile app development environment

First you will need to set up a mobile app development environment.

Follow the first part of the instructions on this page:

You need to get as far as the part in section 5 where you open the app in the browser; this is what Behat will do. You don't need to complete the later steps.

  • You will need to update this environment periodically, for example when a new version of the mobile app is released. Behat does not do this for you.
  • If you need to run tests against multiple versions of the mobile app, you can do this by updating the code in this mobile app workspace and then running the Behat tests again, or by having multiple copies of the mobile workspace and changing which one Behat points to.

Add the mobile app Behat configuration

You need to add one or two lines to your config.php to enable app testing. First, put this line in:

$CFG->behat_approot = '/path/to/app/workspace/moodlemobile2';

This may be sufficient, but you need to be aware of a couple of facts about the Ionic server used for app testing:

  • Depending on your computer, it may take about 3 minutes to start up.
  • The server uses about 1GB RAM.

There are two options, covered next.

Let Behat launch the app environment

If you want Behat to launch the app environment for you, then you don't need to add anything else to config.php.

When you do this, the Ionic server will be started automatically when Behat runs a test that uses the 'I enter the mobile app' step. It will be automatically terminated when the Behat test run finishes. If the test run includes multiple scenarios that use the app, they will all reuse the one server; it won't restart each time.

This is simple and convenient, but it is probably not a good approach for developers who frequently re-run a short Behat run (as you have to wait for it to start Ionic every time) or for complex systems that run Behat in parallel (as you may end up with multiple copies of Ionic eating up your RAM).

Manually launch the app environment yourself

The other option is to launch the Ionic server yourself (using ionic serve -b) before running any Behat tests, and also kill it yourself once you are finished with it. In this case, after launching it you will see output like:

[OK] Development server running! 

    Local: http://localhost:8100
    External: http://137.108.5.43:8100, http://192.168.56.1:8100

To use it in Behat, add this extra line to the Moodle config.php:

$CFG->behat_ionicaddress = 'http://localhost:8100';

The advantage of this approach is that you are in charge of bringing up and taking down the Ionic server, so you can do this efficiently, share a copy between parallel runs, etc. The disadvantage is that you do have to remember to do it; if the server isn't running, tests which use the app will fail.

The running Ionic server should correspond to the app root setting, above, because the version number from the mobile app installation is used to determine which tests to run.

Browser profiles

Mobile tests only run in Chrome, so you need to make sure you have a Chrome profile set up in your config.php Behat settings.

Behat will automatically run app tests (those with @app tag) only in a Chrome browser profile. So, if you run multiple browser tests, it won't waste time trying to run the app tests in each one.

Behat init

After you have set up the config.php, you will need to re-run Behat init:

php admin/tool/behat/cli/init.php

This is necessary because by default, Behat won't run app tests (those with @app tag) at all, since you didn't have it configured.

Running Behat

To run mobile tests in Behat, simply launch Behat in the usual way, but make sure you are using a Chrome profile. (Depending on your setup, this might mean using --profile=chrome.)

You can specify the scenarios to run as normal. The app tests all have the @app tag, so if you want to run all the mobile tests you can specify --tags=app, but you can also run any other set of scenarios. It is OK to combine app and normal tests in the same run.

Writing tests

This page assumes you already know all about Writing acceptance tests in general.

Test structure

  • Mobile app test scenarios should be marked @app and @javascript in addition to any other tags that may be required.
  • If creating a feature file specifically for app tests, call it app_whatever.feature (i.e. use the app_ prefix). This is not technically required, it's just for consistency.

You are writing a normal Behat test and this is likely to require background steps similar to any other Moodle Behat test, for example the following "courses" exist, and so on.

Start the app

Once all necessary Moodle configuration steps (creating courses, users, groups, etc.) are done, use this Behat step to start the app:

Given I enter the app

This will:

  • Set up your Moodle settings to allow the mobile app to connect.
  • Launch Ionic if necessary
  • Open the Ionic server address in the test Chrome browser.
  • Install necessary JavaScript code in the page that supports Behat testing.
  • Automatically enter the server URL into the app if necessary.

After this step completes, if it is the first time you ran the app inside this scenario, you will be left at the login screen. If you already logged in earlier, then you will be at the start page.

You can use this step even when you are already in the app; this will restart it.

Log in to the app

All the other app-specific Behat steps end with the words 'in the app' to distinguish them from the normal steps. To log in:

When I log in as "student1" in the app

This step can only be used on the app login page. It will log in with the given username and password. You will then be left at the start page.

Actions

And I press "Course 1" in the app

This finds an element which contains either the visible text, or Aria label, 'Course 1' and clicks it. It should work for links, buttons and similar.

You should be able to use this for almost any actions that would be carried out by pressing something - pressing a button, following a link, changing a checkbox, switching a switch, opening a dropdown, selecting something from the popup, etc.

For buttons that are icons with no text, you can usually find them using the Chrome inspector - look for the 'aria-label' attribute.

You can press the main (bottom) menu buttons using this step. For example, the home button icon has the label 'home', the '...' icon has the label 'more'.

  • Exact matches (an element which contains only the specified text, or where the Aria label is exactly the specified text) will be preferred. If there are no exact matches, then partial ones (anything containing that text) will be considered.
  • If there are multiple matches, or none, the step will fail. You can avoid this by specifying an exact match (provided there is only one exact match, this will not fail even if there are other partial matches) or by clicking on an icon instead of text.
  • If the item you try to press is a label for some other form field (using ion-label and the aria-labelled-by attribute) then it will actually press the field; this is useful in the settings menus.

And I press "Course 1" near "Unique text" in the app

This is a variant of the above step which is useful when there are multiple elements with the same text on the page. The second value ('Unique text' in this example) should be some text that is unique on the page. The system will press the instance of 'Course 1' that is nearest to the supplied unique text.

(This is intended as a simpler alternative to the standard Behat steps that use the word 'in', such as I click on "X" "thing" in "Y" "css_element". Those steps are complex and can be difficult to use. This one is not as generic but hopefully will handle most circumstances.)

  • Nearest is defined in terms of the DOM rather than pixel position; it is based on the number of steps you would have to take up the tree from the candidate item before you get to a shared ancestor with the unique text.

And I set the field "field name" to "text value" in the app

This sets a text field to the given value. For the field name, you can use the placeholder text (exact match will be found first, otherwise partial match if any).

  • The normal version of this step supports various form fields, but in the app this only supports text fields at the moment. Use the press step (above) for other tyepes of field.

And I press the back button in the app

This will press the back button (the left pointing arrow at top left of the app).

Tests

Then the header should be "Course 1" in the app

This checks the text of the current page header (orange stripe at top of page) in the app. It must be an exact match for the specified text.

For this scenario, I should see would also work, but this allows you to specifically check the header as opposed to the text appearing elsewhere on the page.

Standard test steps

You can use all the normal Moodle Behat test steps while carrying out app testing, but some of them don't work very well. The app has a complex DOM and previous pages that are 'back' from your current page may still be present in the DOM, which means that any steps that just look for the first matching element in the DOM are likely to look for elements on a page you're not even on.

Useful, working steps

  • I should see and I should not see are fine.
  • I pause works and is very useful to debug your scenario.

Problematic steps

  • The I reload the page step does not work correctly in the app and may leave your test in a mess. Use I enter the app if you want to reload the app.

Leaving the app

If you want to leave the app and go back to Moodle within a scenario, simply use a Moodle step that goes to a page, such as I am on site homepage or I am on "Course 1" course homepage.

You only need to do this if you want to carry out actions within Moodle after using the app, within the scenario. At the end of your scenario, there is no need to explicitly leave the app; Moodle will automatically start the next scenario on the Moodle start page as usual.

Limitations

  • Currently it doesn't work very well if you click a link in the app which opens a new browser window.

Work in progress

I haven't finished writing this page yet

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