Testing holds sheer importance in the whole software development process. Companies ensure the quality, credibility, and reliability of their React applications by implementing testing techniques.
With technological advancements, it is extremely crucial to implement testing strategies that check each line of code rigorously. For this, React has two popular tools that help developers test the React components i.e. Jest and React Testing Library (RTL).
In this short blog, we will give you a brief guide to testing React components using Jest, RTL, and other testing techniques. Let’s find out what we have for you.
Jest Testing in React
Jest is a testing framework that fits best for React applications. It is simple to use, and configure and comes with many built-in features like mocking, spies, and snapshot testing.
Here are some features of Jest.
- It requires minimal setup in many React applications.
- Snapshot testing enables you to capture the output of the rendered components and compare it with an expected snapshot.
- It is fast and efficient providing quick feedback and detailed reporting.
- Jest has built-in support for mocking functions, modules, and timers, that make the unit testing easier.
React Testing Library (RTL)
If we say that the React Testing Library tests the real-time behavior of the users, it won’t be wrong. It focuses on testing the interaction of the users with the React components, rather than testing the internal procedures or structure of the code.
Features of RTL include:
- RTL is a user-centric testing that tests the components based on user experience, rather than relying on implementation details.
- It has simple APIs like render(), fireEvent(), and screen.getByText() to query and interact with elements easily.
If you want to ensure that your React application is error-free and its components work perfectly according to expectations, hire React developers who have experience in testing applications using Jest and RTL.
Other React Testing Techniques
Other than the Jest and React Testing Library, many testing techniques are used to test the React applications. Other React testing techniques include:
- Enzyme
Enzyme is a testing technique developed by Airbnb, which is a platform built on React. Enzyme is a popular testing utility allowing one to manipulate, traverse, and assert React components’ output.
As far as the testing area of Enzyme is concerned, it only tests the component internals, like state, props, and lifecycle methods.
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- End-to-End Testing with Cypress
Cypress focuses on end-to-end testing. It ensures that the applications work perfectly as per the expectations. Moreover, it allows to simulate the user journeys across the entire application, from front-end user interface to back-end APIs.
- Manual testing and Exploratory Testing
The value of automated testing is undeniable but manual testing shall not be ignored. Manual and exploratory testing allows the testers and quality assurance team to manually interact with the application.
Testers discover edge cases, usability issues, and bugs that might not come in the eye of automated testing.
So, the combination of manual and automated testing. This testing combination gives a more resilient and error-free React application.
How to Choose the Right Testing Strategy?
While testing the React applications, it is a good strategy to combine different testing techniques to check the application. Here are some tips for choosing the right testing strategies.
- Use Jest or unit testing when testing small or isolated components.
- Use the combination of Jest and RTL to check the individual components and their interactions.
- Go for E2E testing to verify the user flow and interactions across applications.
- To identify the usability and functionality issues, opt for manual or exploratory testing.
Conclusion
Testing is vital in software development as it ensures the delivery of quality software products. Combining Jest and RTL test the component behavior and user interactions effectively. While other testing techniques also hold a sheer importance in testing React applications.
