On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 4:46 PM, Dan Tenenbaum <dtene...@fhcrc.org> wrote:
> Hi Winston, > > > > On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 2:39 PM, Winston Chang <wins...@stdout.org> wrote: > > Hi everyone - > > > > Great to hear from you all on your thoughts about Shiny. I've tried to > > answer some of Dan's questions below... > > > > > >>> > >>> 1) Testing shiny apps > >>> > >>> Typically, bioconductor packages have man page examples, vignettes, > >>> and (sometimes) unit tests, so when we build the packages every day on > >>> our build system, the code in all of these is evaluated and we have > >>> some idea of whether the package is working as it's supposed to. > >>> > >>> I'm not clear on how to do similar testing of a shiny application. > >>> Since launching a shiny app takes away the R console (until the app is > >>> closed), shiny apps should probably not be launched in example or test > >>> code (unless interactive() is TRUE). > >>> > >>> Do the shiny folks (or anyone else) have thoughts on testing shiny > apps? > > > > > > With regard to testing, we have unit tests for various components, and > we're > > working on end-to-end tests using Selenium. > > > > We do have some unit tests in inst/tests/, but they are entirely on the R > > side - they don't test interaction with the browser. We have some other > > tests in inst/tests-js/, which exercise the client (Javascript) side, but > > they don't test interaction with the server. > > > > Of course it's important to have tests for client-server communication. > > We're also in the process of setting up some end-to-end tests using > > Selenium, but that's just in the beginning stages right now. Hopefully in > > the future we'll have more to say about these kinds of tests. > > > > > > My feeling (and I could be wrong) is that Bioconductor package > developers will be more concerned with testing the basic logic of > shiny apps, and that therefore testing only in R would be sufficient > for the most part. For example, if you could simulate a slider in a > unit test by just changing a reactive value, it would not be necessary > to make sure it works in the deployed context (with browser and > server). > Unfortunately, the testing of logic in a Shiny app does require an active connection from web browser, since the state of a Shiny app includes both the server and client. In other words, you can't simulate a slider value change without actually starting a web browser -- although it may be possible to automate these tests using something like phantom.js, which is a headless web browser that can be used for testing. As I mentioned, we're working on setting up some tests like this. On a related note, someone on the Shiny-Discuss mailing list just posted about a project he's working on which makes it possible to have R and Selenium WebDriver commuicate: https://github.com/johndharrison/RSelenium Best, -Winston [[alternative HTML version deleted]] _______________________________________________ Bioc-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/bioc-devel
