[update April 2012] : The book is now coming out on O'Reilly! more info here:
http://www.tdd-django-tutorial.com/blog/articles/2013/test-driven-development-web-applications-book-exis/
Thanks so much for following on this far! I'm afraid that's all there is for
now, but I am about to start on the next stage -- a proper book on TDD for
web apps.
If you've found the tutorial useful so far, I wonder whether I can solicit
some feeback regarding a book version?
Here's the chapter outline I've got so far. Now, remember, this is a very rough draft,
and it's very much bound to change, but I'd love to hear your thoughts... Especially
about some quite general questions, like:
- Am I broadly covering the right sort of stuff?
- Am I right to spend plenty of time talking about JavaScript, as well as Python?
- What should I choose as my example app? I've written the outline as if it
were a forums app, but I'm starting to see the appeal of one of the other classic
examples, the "to-do list" (very simple at base, can be extended easily, opportunities
for sharing/social bits, plenty of stuff to do on the client-side too...). What
would you choose as an example?
PART 1 - Beginning web app development with TDD
The idea is to dive straight in with a practical example, rather than talking
a lot of theory up-front. I had originally thought to start with a toy example
(cf these 3 abandoned chapters: http://www.tdd-django-tutorial.com/tutorial/6/ ),
but I decided that people prefer real practical stuff to toy examples...
I also want the first few chapters to be very short + bit-sized, so that the
reader feels like they're really making progress quickly... (the inspiration
comes from Kent Beck's TDD by Example, an awesome book)
Essentially part 1 is a re-hash of this online tutorial, using a differnt example
app...
1: Our first functional test with Selenium
- Briefly discuss difference between functional testing (AKA acceptance
testing, integration testing, whatever) and unit testing
- Write first test - Introduce Selenium, setUp, tearDown
- Demonstrate we can get it to open a web browser, and navigate to a web page
eg - google.com
2: Getting Django set-up and running
- Change our test to look for the test server
- Switch to Django LiveServerTestCase. Explain
- Get the first test running and failing for a sensible reason
- Create django project django-admin.py startproject
- It worked!
3: A static front page
- Look for "Welcome to the Forums", or similar
- urls.py, direct_to_template ?
4: Super-users and the Django admin site
- Extend FT to try and log in
- Explain the admin site
- Database setup, settings.py, syncdb, admin.py
- runserver to show login code
- Explain difference between test database and real database
- Fixtures
5: First unit tests and Database model
- Distinction between unit tests and functional tests
- Extend FT to try and create a new topic
- new app
- models.py
- test/code cycle
6: Testing a view
- urls.py again
- Test view as a function
- assert on string contents
7: Django's template system
- Introduce template syntax
- Keep testing as a function
- The, introduce the Django Test Client
8: Reflections: what to test, what not to test
- time for a bit of theory/philosophy
- "Don't test constants"
- Test logic
- Tests for simple stuff should be simple, so not much effort
10: User Authentication
- Sign up, login/logout
- Email?
12: On Refactoring
- Martin Fowler
- Tests critical
- Methodical process - explain step by step
PART 2: More advanced testing for a more advanced site
14: Notifications
- Django Notifications, for post edits
15: Adding style with MarkDown
- Using an external library
16: Switching to OAuth: Mocking
- "Don't store passwords"
- Discuss challenges of external dependencies
17: Getting Dynamic: Testing Javascript part 1
- Simple input validation
- Choose JS unit testing framework (probably Qunit, or YUI)
18: Testing Javascript part 2 - Ajax
- Dynamic previews of post input
19: Getting pretty: Bootstrap
- Bring in nicer UI elements
20: Getting pretty: Gravatar
PART 3: Getting seriously sexy
21: Getting serious about the client-side + single-page website?
- Introduce one of the client-side js frameworks -- backbone.js / ember.js / angular
22: Switching Databases 1: PostgreSQL
- show how Django makes this easy
23: Websockets and Async on the server-side
- we want dynamic notifications of when new posts appear on a thread we're
looking at
- Need to spin up, Tornado/Twisted/Gevent as well as Django LiveServerTestCase
- FT opens multiple browser tabs in parallel
- Big change!
24: Switching Databases 2: NoSQL and MongoDB
- obligatory discussion of NoSQL and MongoDB
- descrine installation, particularities of testing
26: Continuous Integration
- Need to build 3 server types
- Jenkins (or maybe buildbot)
- Need to adapt Fts, maybe rely less on LiveServerTestCase
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