Testing on Caktus Group

How Mock Can Improve Your Unit Tests: Part 2

Mon, 05 Apr 2021 12:54:21 +0000

In Part 1 of this blog series, we started looking at how we can use mocking to improve our unit tests. We'll expand on that in this post.

How Mock Can Improve Your Unit Tests: Part 1

Mon, 29 Mar 2021 12:54:20 +0000

We've written in the past about the importance of unit tests and how to write better ones: Culture of Unit Testing, Subtests are the Best.

Accessibility Testing Tips for Beginners

Thu, 23 Jul 2020 14:37:24 +0000

Above: Caktus uses several mobile devices for accessibility testing. For a more realistic experience, it’s important to test on devices, and not just with simulators.

Suggestions For Picking Up Old Projects

Fri, 15 Feb 2019 18:36:49 +0000

At Caktus, we work on many projects, some of which are built by us from start to finish, while others are inherited from other sources. Oftentimes, we pick up a project that we either have not worked on in a long time, or haven’t worked on at all, so we have to get familiar with the code and figure out the design decisions that were made by those who developed it (including when the developers are younger versions of ourselves). Moreover, it is a good idea to improve the setup process in each project, so others can have an easier time getting set up in the future. In our efforts to work on such projects, a few things have been helpful both for becoming familiar with the projects more quickly, and for making the same projects easier to pick up in the future.

7 Conferences We’re Looking Forward To

Sat, 26 Jan 2019 18:01:22 +0000

Above: The Internet Summit in Raleigh is one of the local conferences we recommend attending. (Photo by Ian Huckabee.)

At Caktus, we strongly believe in professional development and continued learning. We encourage our talented team to stay up to date with industry trends and technologies. During 2018, Cakti attended a number of conferences around the country. Below is a list (in alphabetical order) of the ones we found the most helpful, practical, and interesting. We look forward to attending these conferences again, and if you get the chance, we highly recommend that you check them out as well.

My New Year’s Resolution: Work Less to Code Better

Thu, 27 Dec 2018 12:00:00 +0000

You may look at my job title (or picture) and think, “Oh, this is easy, he’s going to resolve to stand up at his desk more.” Well, you’re not wrong, that is one of my resolutions, but I have an even more important one. I, Jeremy Gibson, resolve to do less work in 2019. You’re probably thinking that it’s bold to admit this on my employer’s blog. Again, you’re not wrong, but I think I can convince them that the less work I do, the more clear and functional my code will become. My resolution has three components.

3 Common Form Testing Issues (Plus 1 Helpful Tool)

Mon, 28 May 2018 13:30:00 +0000

Forms are something that I find myself testing frequently, whether it’s an e-commerce checkout page or a new model in the Django admin. The challenge of forms is that users will often enter things that may not have been accounted for when the form was created.

Culture of Unit Testing

Mon, 08 Jan 2018 14:30:00 +0000

Unit testing is something that deeply divides programmer communities. Nearly everyone agrees that it’s good to have unit tests in place, but some developers question whether the time invested in writing unit tests would be better spent writing “real” code, doing manual QA, or debugging.

Subtests are the Best

Mon, 29 May 2017 13:30:00 +0000

Subtests are the best

Testing our code is important. Because developers write bugs, it’s valuable to catch and correct them before the code gets to production so our apps work as they should. Specifically, we want tests that are DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself), thorough, and readable. Though there are many ways to try to accomplish these goals, subtests make each of them easier. If you’re not using subtests in your test classes, you probably should be.

Plan for mistakes as a developer

Mon, 30 Jan 2017 18:44:30 +0000

I Am Not Perfect.

I've been programming professionally for 25 years, and the most important thing I have learned is this:

Ship It Day Q1 2017

Wed, 18 Jan 2017 16:39:28 +0000

Last Friday, Caktus set aside client projects for our regular quarterly ShipIt Day. From gerrymandered districts to RPython and meetup planning, the team started off 2017 with another great ShipIt.

Better Testing With Less Code (PyCon 2016 Must-See Talk: 2/6)

Wed, 13 Jul 2016 13:37:37 +0000

Part two of six in our annual PyCon Must-See Series, a weekly highlight of talks our staff especially loved at PyCon. With so many fantastic talks, it’s hard to know where to start, so here’s our short list.

Writing Unit Tests for Django Migrations

Tue, 02 Feb 2016 13:00:00 +0000

Editor's note: This post was originally published in February 2016 and was updated in August 2017 to incorporate improvements suggested by our readers. It has also been tested for compatibility as of the Django 1.11 release.

Testing Client-Side Applications with Django Post Mortem

Mon, 08 Jun 2015 12:22:35 +0000

I had the opportunity to give a webcast for O’Reilly Media during which I encountered a presenter’s nightmare: a broken demo. Worse than that it was a test failure in a presentation about testing. Is there any way to salvage such an epic failure?

Webinar: Testing Client-Side Applications with Django

Tue, 20 Jan 2015 16:40:09 +0000

Technical Director Mark Lavin will be hosting a free O’Reilly webinar today at 4PM EST or 1PM PT on Testing Client-Side Applications with Django. Mark says testing is one of the most popular question topics he receives. It’s also a topic near and dear to Caktus’ quality-loving heart. Mark’s last webinar garnered more than 500 viewers, so sign up quick!

Tips for Upgrading Django

Mon, 07 Jul 2014 10:00:00 +0000

From time to time we inherit code bases running outdated versions of Django and part of our work is to get them running a stable and secure version. In the past year we've done upgrades from versions as old as 1.0 and we've learned a few lessons along the way.

Caktus Completes RapidSMS Community Coordinator Development for UNICEF

Wed, 05 Feb 2014 14:12:35 +0000

Colin Copeland, Managing Member at Caktus, has wrapped up work, supported by UNICEF, as the Community Coordinator for the open source RapidSMS project. RapidSMS is a text messaging application development library built on top of the Django web framework. It creates a SMS provider agnostic way of sending and receiving text messages. RapidSMS has been used widely in the mobile health field, in particular in areas where internet access cannot be taken for granted and cell phones are the best communication tool available. This has included projects initiated by UNICEF country offices in Ethiopia, Madagascar, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Skipping Test DB Creation

Wed, 02 Oct 2013 12:48:59 +0000

We are always looking for ways to make our tests run faster. That means writing tests which don't preform I/O (DB reads/writes, disk reads/writes) when possible. Django has a collection of TestCase subclasses for different use cases. The common TestCase handles the fixture loading and the creation the of TestClient. It uses the database transactions to ensure that the database state is reset for every test. That is it wraps each test in a transaction and rolls it back once the test is over. Any transaction management inside the test becomes a no-op. Since [TestCase]{.title-ref}[ overrides the transaction facilities, if you need to test the transactional behavior of a piece of code you can instead use ]{.title-ref}[TransactionTestCase]{.title-ref}[. ]{.title-ref}[TransactionTestCase]{.title-ref}` resets the database after the test runs by truncating all tables which is much slower than rolling back the transaction particularly if you have a large number of tables.

Factory Boy as an Alternative to Django Testing Fixtures

Wed, 17 Jul 2013 14:30:00 +0000

When testing a Django application you often need to populate the test database with some sample data. The standard Django TestCase has support for fixture loading but there are a number of problems with using fixtures:

MEDIA_ROOT and Django Tests

Wed, 26 Jun 2013 14:54:30 +0000

If you’ve ever written a test for a view or model with associated uploaded files you might have noticed a small problem with those files hanging around after the tests are complete. Since version 1.3, Django won’t delete the files associated with your model instances when they are deleted. Some work-arounds for this issue involve writing a custom delete for your model or using a post_delete signal handler. But even with those in place the files would not be deleted during tests because the model instances are not explicitly deleted at the end of the test case. Instead, Django simply rolls back the transaction and the delete method is never called nor are the signals fired. This can be quite an annoyance when running the tests repeatedly and watching your MEDIA_ROOT (or worse your S3 bucket) fill up with garbage data. More than annoyance, this introduces something you always want to avoid in unittests: global state.

Simplifying the Testing of Unmanaged Database Models in Django (Updated for Django 4.2 in 2024)

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 15:01:09 +0000

Editor's note: This post was originally published in September, 2010 and was updated in December, 2024 to incorporate changes in Django and improvements suggested by our readers. It has also been tested for compatibility as of the Django 4.2 release.

Continuous Integration with Django and Hudson CI (Day 1)

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:58:48 +0000

We're always looking for new tools to make our development environment more robust here at Caktus. We write a lot of tests to ensure proper functionality as new features land and bug fixes are added to our projects. The next step is to integrate with a continuous integration system to automate the process and regularly check that status of the build.

Testing Django Views for Concurrency Issues (Updated for Django 4.2 in 2024)

Tue, 26 May 2009 19:59:25 +0000

Editor's note: This post was originally published in May, 2009 and was updated in December, 2024 to incorporate changes in Django and improvements suggested by our readers. It has also been tested for compatibility as of the Django 4.2 release.