Unit Test¶

Unit testing is important, that's out of the question. But how to write unit tests?

There is something special in Truffle about unit testing. The problem is that in the testing suite you get contract-abstractions using truffle-contract, while in the normal app you worked with web3-contract instances.

Let's implement a super simple unit test and see if we can test that items get created.

First of all, delete the tests in the "/test" folder. They are for the simplestorage smart contract which doesn't exist anymore. Then add new tests:

test/ItemManager.test.js

const ItemManager = artifacts.require("./ItemManager.sol");

contract("ItemManager", accounts => {
it("... should let you create new Items.", async () => {
    const itemManagerInstance = await ItemManager.deployed();
    const itemName = "test1";
    const itemPrice = 500;

    const result = await itemManagerInstance.createItem(itemName, itemPrice, { from: accounts[0] });
    assert.equal(result.logs[0].args._itemIndex, 0, "There should be one item index in there")
    const item = await itemManagerInstance.items(0);
    assert.equal(item._identifier, itemName, "The item has a different identifier");
});
});

Truffle Contract vs Web3js

Mind the difference: In web3js you work with "instance.methods.createItem" while in truffle-contract you work with "instance.createItem". Also, the events are different. In web3js you work with result.events.returnValues and in truffle-contract you work with result.logs.args. The reason is that truffle-contract mostly took the API from web3js 0.20 and they did a major refactor for web3js 1.0.0.

Keep the truffle development console open and type in a new terminal/powershell window:

truffle test

It should bring up a test like this:

This is how you add unit tests to your smart contracts.