New automated testing tools

Posted by Sam on 16 June 2008

With demands of recent projects, we've done some internal work to improve the visibility and documentation of our testing infrastructure. Much of this functionality has been available in SilverStripe for some time, but we want to continue to raise the bar. Just landed in trunk are some recent changes aimed at improving the experience of testing and making it easier than ever for developers to write automated tests that run alongside application code and SilverStripe modules.

Our new Testing Guide explains what you need to know, and how to get started. As our user-base expands, and we continue to build larger and more sophisticated applications atop the SilverStripe core, we're upping the ante for module maintainers and contributors to commit unit tests along with their new code.

The great thing about unit tests is that as well as improving the reliability and documentation of particular parts of the codebase, they also function as an 'early warning' system for regressions across the entire product platform. Our continuous integration server at http://buildbot.silverstripe.com/waterfall automatically runs the entire suite of core and module tests every time new code is committed to the open source repository, providing real-time feedback and additional motivation for keeping those builds running green!

Last month, Mark gave a presentation to the SilverStripe team that gives a good introduction to many of the concepts. It is available on slide share:

Thanks to Mark Rickerby for his help developing SilverStripe's automated testing tools and putting this blog post together.