Why the world needs PhoenixTest

ElixirConf US 2024 - German Velasco
2024.elixircon...
PhoenixTest is the missing library in the Elixir/Phoenix ecosystem.
Think about it, we have well established libraries for other core web-app needs:
Need interactive pages? LiveView
Need a database mapper? Ecto
Need a testing framework? ExUnit
Need background job processing? Oban
Need data pipelines? Broadway
But how do we test Phoenix applications?
… LiveViews are tested with LiveViewTest
… controllers are (I guess) tested with controller tests?
…. dynamicallly rendered pages (dead views) are tested with… 🤔(nothing?)
Isn’t that shocking?!
Phoenix is an amazing framework! But we don’t have a coherent, unified story around testing (like we do with ExUnit for Elixir).
We could use Wallaby or Hound (I have in the past). But that comes with another set of downsides:
Tests s-l-o-w d-o-w-n because everything is running through Chromedriver (an actual browser clicking buttons and stuff)
We have intermittent test failures (since we’re now dealing with a browser and potentially async operations)
We have Chromedriver failures! (Have you gotten that "invalid session id" error yet?😩)
You now have two different ways of testing LiveViews and dead views (and what happens when you want to test interactions between the two?).
That’s why I created PhoenixTest!
Join me as I walk you through why the world* needs Phoenix test.
We’ll talk about:
where it fits in the ecosystem,
why I think you should use it, and
… I’ll roll up my sleeves and live code (🤯) to show you how awesome it can be to test drive a Phoenix app!
You’ll come out equipped and ready to add PhoenixTest to your app for all your testing needs.