4. Testing

Writing Tests

Tests are defined as functions in the following form:

func TestXxx(t *testing.T)

The tests reside in the same directory as the source code. The test files end with _test.go. The code in these files is not compiled into the binary when building the project. For demonstration purposes we put the function and test in the same code block. These are usually in a different file (e.g. calculator.go and calculator_test.go).

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package main

import "testing"

func Add(a, b int) int {
	return a + b
}

func TestAdd(t *testing.T) {
	expected := 5

	got := Add(2, 3)

	if got != expected {
		t.Fatalf("expected %d, got %d", expected, got)
	}
}

Output:
=== RUN   TestAdd
--- PASS: TestAdd (0.00s)
PASS

Test failures

There are two methods to output test failures:

  • t.Error prints the error without stopping the current test
  • t.Fatal aborts the current test

Both variants also support template strings by appending f:

if got != expected {
	t.Fatalf("Wrong output returned. Got: %v Expected: %v", got, expected)
}

Try and be explicit with your error messages. It should be clear:

  • What is being tested
  • What was received
  • What was expected

Running tests

# Run all tests in the currenty directory
go test

# Run all tests in the current directory and all subdirectories
go test ./...

# Run a single test
go test -run TestAdd

# Clean the cache, so that all tests are rerun
go clean -testcache

Compare structs and slices

It should be noted that comparing structs with == only works for simple cases. As soon as the struct contains pointers or slices a different method has to be used. There are two variants:

  • reflect.DeepEqual is older and in the standard library. However it has less features (e.g. no Diff function) and cannot compare things like time in different time zones.
  • go-cmp is a new library that makes comparing and printing the output easy. It should only be used for tests and never in production code. We recommend using this library.
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package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"reflect"
	"testing"

	"github.com/google/go-cmp/cmp"
)

func TestEqual(t *testing.T) {
	type Role struct {
		Name string
	}
	type User struct {
		Name string
		Role *Role
	}
	user1 := User{Name: "Andrea"}
	user2 := User{Name: "Andrea"}
	fmt.Println("Compare simple struct:", user1 == user2)

	user1.Role = &Role{"admin"}
	user2.Role = &Role{"admin"}
	fmt.Println("Compare struct with pointer", user1 == user2)
	fmt.Println("Compare complex structs with reflect", reflect.DeepEqual(user1, user2))
	fmt.Println("Compare complex structs with go-cmp", cmp.Equal(user1, user2))

	user2.Role = &Role{"user"}
	fmt.Print("Diff of two structs with go-cmp", cmp.Diff(user1, user2))
}

Output:
=== RUN   TestEqual
Compare simple struct: true
Compare struct with pointer false
Compare complex structs with reflect true
Compare complex structs with go-cmp true
Diff of two structs with go-cmp  main.User{
  	Name: "Andrea",
- 	Role: &main.Role{Name: "admin"},
+ 	Role: &main.Role{Name: "user"},
  }
--- PASS: TestEqual (0.00s)
PASS

Table driven tests

Instead of writing many small tests, we prefer to group tests that test a single function. This is achieved by putting all the test cases in a single “table”. The table contains input and expected output. We then loop over the table and check if the function returns the expected output.

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package main

import "testing"

func Add(a, b int) int {
	return a + b
}

func TestAdd(t *testing.T) {
	// Define a struct
	type TestCase struct {
		arg1     int
		arg2     int
		expected int
	}
	// Define the different inputs and expected outputs
	cases := []TestCase{
		TestCase{
			arg1:     2,
			arg2:     3,
			expected: 5,
		},
		TestCase{
			arg1:     20,
			arg2:     30,
			expected: 50,
		},
		TestCase{
			arg1:     2,
			arg2:     -3,
			expected: -1,
		},
	}
	// Loop through the test cases
	for _, tc := range cases {
		got := Add(tc.arg1, tc.arg2)
		if got != tc.expected {
			t.Errorf("Add(%d, %d): expected %d, got %d", tc.arg1, tc.arg2, tc.expected, got)
		}
	}
}

Output:
=== RUN   TestAdd
--- PASS: TestAdd (0.00s)
PASS

Subtests

A single test can be run with go test -run TestAdd. However with table driven tests, we cannot run a single test case from the table. The testing package allows us to Run another test within our test. The format is:

t.Run("test name", func(t *testing.T) {
	// The test comes here
})

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package main

import "testing"

func Add(a, b int) int {
	return a + b
}

func TestAdd(t *testing.T) {
	t.Run("Add(2,3)", func(t *testing.T) {
		expected := 5

		got := Add(2, 3)

		if got != expected {
			t.Fatalf("expected %d, got %d", expected, got)
		}
	})
	t.Run("Add(2,-3)", func(t *testing.T) {
		expected := -1

		got := Add(2, -3)

		if got != expected {
			t.Fatalf("expected %d, got %d", expected, got)
		}
	})
}

Output:
=== RUN   TestAdd
=== RUN   TestAdd/Add(2,3)
=== RUN   TestAdd/Add(2,-3)
--- PASS: TestAdd (0.00s)
    --- PASS: TestAdd/Add(2,3) (0.00s)
    --- PASS: TestAdd/Add(2,-3) (0.00s)
PASS

Now a single test can be run:

go test -v -run 'TestAdd/Add\(2,3\)'

We need to escape the parentheses, because the value is interpreted as a regex. The -v flag makes the command output more verbose.

Coverage

The test coverage tells us how much of our code is tested.

go test -cover

To see exactly which lines are not tested, run the following:

# Generates coverage report
go test -coverprofile=coverage.out
# Opens browser with detailed report
go tool cover -html=coverage.out

Benchmarks

To test the performance of function we can write benchmarks. These are also placed in the _test.go files and following format:

func BenchmarkXxx(b *testing.B) {
	for n := 0; n < b.N; n++ {
		// Call a function here
	}
}

Run the benchmarks with go test -bench .

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Last modified May 29, 2024: Merge pull request #205 from acend/renovate/actions-checkout-digest (cc47d9a)