[erlang-questions] QuickCheck

[Edmond Begumisa]

On Sun, 22 May 2011 16:15:59 +1000, Anthony Molinaro  
<anthonym@REDACTED> wrote:

>
> On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 08:01:09AM +1000, Edmond Begumisa wrote:
>> I'm a QuickCheck noob trying out PropEr. Actually, I'm very
>> embarrassed to admit that I'm very new to formal testing in general
>> (I've always done things in the ad-hoc way for longer than I care to
>> admit). I only confess to this coz I probably wouldn't get away with
>> lying about it on *this* list when I start asking stupid questions!
>
> I'm mostly a noob myself, but I have used both quickcheck and proper
> and figured anything helps when you're just learning these tools.
>
>> Anyways, I'm having A LOT of trouble getting started. The initial
>> inertia just isn't there. Even with the available documentation from
>> both QuviQ and PropEr. I look at my code and don't know where to
>> begin writing tests for it! A sad state of affairs.
>
> The one thing to remember is that there are many types of testing
> and quickcheck/proper focus on randomized testing of properties.
> Getting you head around testing in that fashion can be a challenge,
> it forces you to think about generating random data for which you
> know the answer.  Quickcheck and proper excel at problems where
> you have a function and it's reverse (like encode and decode), because
> the property of decode (encode (Data)) == Data is pretty easy to setup,
> you just supply random Data and let it run for a few hundred thousand
> tests.  For other functions where you don't have an inverse the trick
> is knowing the answer when you give it random data (at least this
> is what I've found with my limited use of these tools).
>
> Other testing frameworks like eunit or common_test may be more of
> what you are looking for, but it really depends on what you are
> testing.  If you have a general description of the code, I might
> be able to make some suggestions, but its hard to say without
> know what you are trying to test

Firstly, I have a few general purpose libraries. Mainly extensions to  
existing standard libraries like my_lists.erl, my_binaries.erl,  
my_proplists.erl, etc. Auto-testing these is probably not that important.  
But my guess is it would be a good place to start for simplicity.

Secondly, I also have a TCP socket application that's designed to have  
pluggable codecs. The idea being I can just plugin a module called  
http_codec.beam, and the socket server starts doing http. Then I can  
plugin websocket_codec.beam on top of that and it starts doing websocks  
over http. Then I can remove those and plugin ubf_codec.beam, and it  
starts doing UBF over TCP. You get the picture.

The socket server is the usual multi-acceptor (gen_server), spawn new  
connections (gen_fsm) setup. The codecs are just plain modules with  
decode/encode functions that continue from where they last left off. I  
really want to test this coz it's at the center of all the apps I'm  
developing and frequently misbehaves in annoying little ways that I should  
have foreseen but don't realise til it actually happens (little perfect  
storms creep up on me.) I figure automated testing is they only solution.

Thirdly, most of the products I'm working on make heavy use of state  
machines that sit on top of the socket toolkit described above. These are  
application specific and need testing too. Oh, and these interact  
frequently with CouchDB.

That's the basic picture. I want to start testing ALL of this :P  Any more  
tips would be great.

Thanks.

- Edmond -

>
>> I think I just need a few good tutorials. Can anyone recommend some
>> QuickCheck resources to get me going that they've actually
>> successfully used? Do I need to first start out with more
>> "traditional" testing tools first before even attempting QuickCheck?
>
> There are a few nice examples here
>
> http://www.trapexit.org/Category:QuickCheck
>
> There are also a few videos and other things if you search for
> erlang quickcheck tutorial on your favorite search engine.
>
> Hope that helps,
>
> -Anthony
>
>


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