You may start from highest level testing:
1) create "usage scenarios" for your website. Like "customer opens page 'foo', and should see 'bar'". You use such scenarios for manual testing, right?
2) code such scenarios against Django project. You may use BDD testing tools (like lettuce or behave), or do it in pure python. You may call Django views and templates directly (using django unittesting support or lettuce/harvest), or do it through the browser using Selenium. One scenario -- one method. Yes, there is a lot of boilerplate code, but you only need to write it once. BDD tools are used to simplify this process by writing scenarios on DSL called Gherkin, which is easier.
This is some kind of "acceptance testing", the one that helps you to be sure website works like customer expects it to work. Every project should have one, I believe.
After it, you may find that some units of your system are complex and error prone. What is unit? Unit is module, function or even package with _clear interface_. You then create unit tests against this module. Only units with complex logic need to be tested. No need to test simple view that just returns render(): this view is tested as part of high level testing. But if you have function "calc_user_amount" and complex business logic stands behind it, you may create unit test for it.
There are 3 mistakes people do about testing:
1) Testing each function, even private function, even 1 line function. It takes a lot of time, and such tests are fragile. You throw'em away after simple refactoring.
2) Testing "in the middle of abstraction": I mean testing functions with out of clear interface, like private functions. If you need to read function code before writing test (pydoc is not enough), you should not test this function. Try a higher level of abstraction.
3) Skipping high level testing: even if all your code is covered with low-level unit-tests, you still need high level testing like the one with Selenium to make sure everything works correctly, and when you refactor your code you use such testing to make sure you did not break anything.
So, you start with high level, and then cover _some_ units with unit test, if you believe they may contain error.
On Wednesday, March 4, 2015 at 3:03:14 PM UTC+3, Some Developer wrote:
Hi,
I've been working on a Django website for about 2 months on and off and
am nearing the end of development work where I can start thinking about
making it look pretty and the after that deploy to production.
I've been doing lots of manual testing and I'm sure that the website
works correctly but due to the need to get the website in production
ASAP and my lack of unit testing experience with Django (I'm still not
entirely sure what the point of unit testing a 2 or 3 line Django view
is when you can clearly see if it is correct or not) I've neglected
automated testing.
While I'm still going to go ahead and launch the site in production as
soon as it is deployed I want to go back and add in all the unit tests
that are missing. How would you tackle this problem?
Most of the code is pretty simple but there are ecommerce elements that
I have tested extensively by running my code through the Python
debugger. These must always work.
I'm a bit ashamed that it has got this far but I'm mainly a C developer
and unit testing isn't pushed quite so hard there (even though it should
be).
Any help appreciated.
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