Trying to get Docker to use nokogiri
Posted the steps I took at https://stackoverflow.com/q/55678669/631619
in the end I figured out I needed to add
RUN apt install -y build-essential patch ruby-dev zlib1g-dev liblzma-dev
to the Docker build
My attempt to capture the minutia of a programmers life
Working with ruby, switched laptops and out of the blue
$ bundle Traceback (most recent call last): 2: from /home/michael/.rbenv/versions/2.5.1/bin/bundle:23:in `<main>' 1: from /home/michael/.rbenv/versions/2.5.1/lib/ruby/2.5.0/rubygems.rb:308:in `activate_bin_path' /home/michael/.rbenv/versions/2.5.1/lib/ruby/2.5.0/rubygems.rb:289:in `find_spec_for_exe': can't find gem bundler (>= 0.a) with executabl e bundle (Gem::GemNotFoundException)
hmmm. and here we go:
What version of ruby do I have (and make sure if I have _some_ version!)
$ ruby -v ruby 2.5.1p57 (2018-03-29 revision 63029) [x86_64-linux]
hmmm, can I install gems?
$ gem install pry Successfully installed pry-0.12.2 Parsing documentation for pry-0.12.2 Installing ri documentation for pry-0.12.2 Done installing documentation for pry after 1 seconds 1 gem installed
hmmm, yes. So let me try bundle again in case one time issue, network, etc.
$ bundle Traceback (most recent call last): 2: from /home/michael/.rbenv/versions/2.5.1/bin/bundle:23:in `<main>' 1: from /home/michael/.rbenv/versions/2.5.1/lib/ruby/2.5.0/rubygems.rb:308:in `activate_bin_path' /home/michael/.rbenv/versions/2.5.1/lib/ruby/2.5.0/rubygems.rb:289:in `find_spec_for_exe': can't find gem bundler (>= 0.a) with executabl e bundle (Gem::GemNotFoundException) 08:33:20 michael durrantm-2018 /home/michael/Dropbox/_/ultimate-weather-org/ultimate-weather-ruby master
hmmm, maybe reinstall bundler ?
$ gem install bundler Fetching: bundler-2.0.1.gem (100%) Successfully installed bundler-2.0.1 Parsing documentation for bundler-2.0.1 Installing ri documentation for bundler-2.0.1 Done installing documentation for bundler after 2 seconds 1 gem installed
ok, let me try again…
$ bundle Fetching gem metadata from http://rubygems.org/.......... Fetching public_suffix 3.0.3 Installing public_suffix 3.0.3 Fetching addressable 2.6.0 ...
ok, that worked. fairly simple one this time…
Over the next month I will post daily activities here to reflect my intent to refresh myself on various technologies.
3/26 Wednesday C++ and pack of cards routines.
3/27 API development with Postman – learn more Postman basics
3/28 API development with accuweather – got account and key
I have found that rspec’s formatting just lacks options.
The output is critical given that I put it in front of business users.
Here’s my way to do that. I will also add other domain specific lines for the codebase I am actually working on but the ones below are intended to apply to all uses of rspec:
find . -regex \
'\(.*_spec\.rb\|spec_.*\.rb\)' ! -name 'spec_helper.rb' \
-exec cat {} \; | # cat out each file \
grep -E \
'(^ +?describe |RSpec\.describe|^ +?it |^ +?expect|\.should)'|\
sed -E 's/ do +?$//' | # No need for the do \
sed 's/, order\: \:defined//' | # No need for order: :defined \
sed "s/\.value)/)/" | # No need for .value \
sed "s/ eq / equal /" | # Change 'eq' to 'equal' \
sed "s/ eq(/ equal (/" |
sed "s/).to_s/)/" | # No need for .to_s\
sed "s/.text)/)/" | # No need for .text \
sed "s/RSpec\.//" | # Remove Rspec. \
sed $'s/^describe /\\\ndescribe /' | # linefeed between specs \
sed "s/(page\./(/" | # No need for page. \
sed -E "s/find_by_id ?//" | # No need for find_by_id \
sed -E "s/\(\(/(/;s/\)\)/)/" | # Remove double parens ((and)) \
sed -E "s/\(find /(/" | # No need for find statements \
sed -E "s/\(p\./(/" | # No need for p. before page objects \
sed -E "s/have_css/have/" | # make have_css more readable \
sed -E "s/\.disabled\?\)\.to/.disabled\? to/" | # Fix parens \
sed -E $'s/enddescribe/end\\\n\\\ndescribe/' | # Fix issue \
sed '/^end$/d' | # Remove lines with just end on them \
sed '1d' # Remove first (blank) line
Indianapolis, Indiana, Saturday 01/05/2018
As the small crowd started showing up on a crisp Saturday morning In January for the ‘hackathon at the Ironworks’ there was a lot of uncertainty about just what they would – or even could – actually “build”.
Everyone knew each other because they worked at or was a contractor at Sallie Mae and had seen some of the pieces of this at work. This was an opportunity for them to build a similar code testing and deployment system using modern secure open source tools and using some of the most modern hosting and application building services that are pre-made to be plug and play with each other. Using personal (non-sallie mae) pc’s and a non-sallie mae network were obvious prerequisites to the endeavor.
So how’d they do?
Well clearly fun was on the Agenda from the start. The Admin Assistant gave out high quality (metal) spinners to all and a stuffed polar bear took center piece on the table (see photo). Then folks divvied up the various roles. Bascially nearly everyone was a Director! There was a Director of Application Development, Director of Devops, Director of Quality Integrations, Director of Product Development and of course… an actual engineer… with the title ‘Actual Engineer’. The person behind the hackathon itself took on the highest title of course – Admin Assistant.
Yes! Within a few minutes they had a slack workspace, connected to a Jira ticketing system. From that they were soon able to hook in code reviews and secure Continuous Integration with CircleCI to run tests in the cloud. As the day progressed they were then able to scale the system up to use 4 parallel servers to run the tests and a Code Grading system to make code quality an easy and visible process. By the time they were finished they were able to do the end to end process of make a change, perform code review and grading, run all the tests in the cloud and if passed, promote the code to production – a true CI/CD system.
Many of the integrations between the different vendors and services were remarkably easier to configure, often in literally seconds or minutes. It was a stark comparison to many enterprise systems that have traditionally required months of pain staking work to set this up. The exercise was also a good example and reminder of the basic of running tests in the cloud as the default way of working. Perhaps most of all the power of working together in the same location with the ability to simply ask each ‘director’ to do the work (often relatively small with modern tools) right on the spot was wonderful to experience.
Re-entering the world of Jira I once again encountered mapping and transition issues.
The import lessons were to remember to consider System Level workflows, Project Level workflows and Board level mappings. The three work together in a non-obvious way. Add to that the need to understand active and inactive workflows, workflows vs. workflow schemas and the Jira approach to publishing changes, and you quickly get lost in a series of dead-end error message such as ‘can’t edit an active workflow’ and the inability to be able to move cards to different status on the board (a common result of not getting changes right).
Also one key thing is to make sure to refresh screens and boards wile doing changes. Some changes are updated real time, others require a page refresh. Easy to get caught out thinking a change hasn’t worked when it has.
Crucial screenshots:
2.Workflows and Workflow Schemas and which are active in projects
3. When you change workflow you’ll frequently need to then readjust a board to deal with the different status and how they should show.
4. At the project level there are settings
5. Including workflows
6. Different boards may need different status mapping to get their workflow right
Actually the term I am thinking off is far from ‘endearment’ but let me avoid naming it for a minute ‘cos it is a pretty loaded term at this point.
Here’s the behaviors I observe in my current work:
The one thing you don’t see here is any mention that management is using command and control. Also there is no mention of whether the manager is deeply involved in the conversations or just watching from the sidelines.
What can be said however is that the command and control is clearly taking place and to a large part due to the employee enabling their manager. By asking the boss to ‘fix things’ instead of asking to (and being able to) work directly with the other employee a huge amount of non-essential work emerges, often including backlogs that are weeks long (even if the current request is simple to do), and all the trapping of command and control and the politics that naturally come with it.
This is why part of a new culture needs to be people asking other people directly for help without groups hiding behind the shields of SAFe, Ticket systems like ServiceNow, CommSec or whatever process is used to create lags. The lags can easily end up taking 99% of the elapsed time to address the need. This defeats the ability to go faster and without that the business is in jeopardy.
My journey for knowledge and transformation started 18 months ago as I joined a new and large company. As I started to read books about new ways of working I found that being at an organization going through dramatic change was the best place to be in order to fully explore many of these issues in person.
So I started reading.
and reading.
and reading.
and reading some more.
After reading a few influential books and getting an ever greater hunger for more, I started to notice something: my thinking had changed. My approach to problems had changed. omg my marriage had changed. My health changed dramatically. At first I didn’t see the changes but then a good friend pointed out “have you noticed how there seems to be a cumulative effect just from reading so many of these books?”. Boom. She was spot on (thanks Stacey!). Once I started to become aware of this – and upped my reading volume even more I started to become more and more aware of this.
It is one things to read a book. Or two. or three. However good they are, they tend to have a fairly limited effect on you. You read some great things and then ‘life continues’. Some of them you will retain and they will pop up at the perfect time in the future, but for the most part, much of the advice fades into the background of life.
Unless.
You read a lot. You start spending a significant portion of your week just reading, highlighting and thinking. Then more dramatic transformation can happen. We have learned that the brain is plastic and this feels to me like taking advantage of that to change and ‘reprogram’ yourself.
Having gone through this I want to pass on what I’ve learned. I want to show the path I’ve taken and how it can work for you in far fewer steps.
OK so I have a list of 80 books on transformation and leadership. All you’ve got to do is go through all those book, highlight and reflect the key parts, and… JUST KIDDING.
I have actually read 80 books about change on my journey but if I had to do the journey again I would pick out the super critical ones. So this is what I have done for you. At first I picked the top 40. So yeah, right, just read 40 books. Again, who am I kidding? So OK I chopped that down to 20. Still too many huh? OK I chopped that down to 15. Still too many? Tough. That is really the minimum I can do (I tried 12 but it meant critical books on the cutting room floor). I think every one of these books is a critical part of the journey and not to be skipped.
The other interesting thing for me was the order I read those book in (preserved here). One book lead to another – primarily through Amazon recommendations from the previous book(s) – but also from recommendations from current colleagues – thanks Joe, Carla and Stacey – and from the challenges I faces in my daily work at a company going through and struggling with an Agile transformation.
So here is the list in the order that I read them:
The next three book are all about experiences from specific companies and helped me to start having some answers to the many questions that I was coming up with in my current workplace.
At this point in my journey I started to get a lot more ‘into’ how people and groups work (and don’t) work well to achieve goals and also some of the science behind it.
I started to read a lot of books on just how people work together and what has proven to work well and what hasn’t.
Finally here are all 15 books should you want to just go on a spending spree.
I got them all on kindle so total cost was probably around $200. A great investment.
https://github.com/durrantm/docker_11_2018_bashful_bash
e.g. alpine
FROM alpine:latest
LABEL maintainer="Michael Durrant<junk@snap2web.com>"
RUN apk add bash git vim
COPY alpine_bashrc /root/.bashrc
COPY .bash_functions.sh /root
COPY .bash_aliases /root
COPY .git-completion.bash /root
RUN "/bin/bash"
RUN git config --global user.name 'Michael'
RUN git config --global user.email 'no-reply@google.com'Some common docker commands:
docker version
docker images
docker pull alpine
docker ps -a
docker start container_name
docker attach container_name
docker ps
Without a Dockerfile…
docker run -it alpine
docker attach container_name
With a Dockerfile…
docker build -t alpine_plus_some .
docker run -it alpine_plus_some
docker attached container_name
“Choose the five tools and technologies that you want to be highly proficient in by July 1st 2019”
I picked:
– Chef
– Docker
– AWS development
– Repl development
– Javascript-es6-npm-mocha
I’m already doing docker today!
Over the past year these 28 books have changed my life in fantastic ways
In planning a future week I realized that right now my calendar is a good reflection of my priorities and how I ideally would like to spend much of my time. Usually I have a lot more standard and recurring meetings, so this is really a rare week that works out this way.
There’s nothing proprietary ( i covered up 1 mtg details) so here it is
But not the physical kind.
I decided to play around with using Ruby for minimal testing setup, a current interest of mine – basically trying to reduce dependencies in a world where we want to spin up vm images such as docker in seconds all day long and the less to install the better for many reasons.
The obstacles I run into were not unusual to me at this point, but the ‘newbie person’ within me could clearly see that a newbie would be so lost with this stuff.
What happened:
1) I created a Gemfile to make sure my dependencies are installed. Pretty minimal:
$ cat Gemfile source 'https://rubygems.org' gem 'minitest' gem 'rspec-expectations' gem 'selenium-webdriver'
Then I bundle to install them and got this: $ bundle Fetching gem metadata from https://rubygems.org/......... Fetching version metadata from https://rubygems.org/.. Resolving dependencies... Installing ffi 1.9.25 with native extensions Gem::Ext::BuildError: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension. current directory: /tmp/bundler20180805-19518-uwhdxgffi-1.9.25/gems/ffi-1.9.25/ext/ffi_c /usr/bin/ruby2.3 -r ./siteconf20180805-19518-1pqqp5e.rb extconf.rb mkmf.rb can't find header files for ruby at /usr/lib/ruby/include/ruby.h extconf failed, exit code 1 Gem files will remain installed in /tmp/bundler20180805-19518-uwhdxgffi-1.9.25/gems/ffi-1.9.25 for inspection. Results logged to /tmp/bundler20180805-19518-uwhdxgffi-1.9.25/extensions/x86_64-linux/2.3.0/ffi-1.9.25/gem_make.out Using diff-lcs 1.3 ... An error occurred while installing ffi (1.9.25), and Bundler cannot continue. Make sure that `gem install ffi -v '1.9.25'` succeeds before bundling.
Which is pretty cryptic ! At first it just seemed like some issue with ffi
What caught my eye though was the “mkmf.b” error. That seemed odd. Googling that showed that some folks needed ruby-dev so (on Ubuntu) I did
sudo apt-get install ruby-dev
and then bundle again and this time the webdriver dependency on ffi was able to be resolved.
I also noticed my sudo prompt kept saying
unable to resolve host my-machine-name
and I found that was because the /etc/hosts file had the old machine name before I changed it. So I fixed that while I was at it too (required sudo vi /etc/hosts)
Not Rocket Science and resolved in 5 mins but this is the sort of thing that just trips so many folks up – including myself before I went through this sort of thing regularly and just got used to it.
Which would you rather maintain?
Practicing the craft (programming). Couldn’t stop messing with this one.
Kinda proud
– max 1 param on methods!
– 5 line max on methods !
– 50 line class
– readable code
But what’s what all the Proc’s and map operations (selects)?
Seems like I’m starting to get that functional feelin’!
class FerryBookings
attr_accessor :current_side_of_river
attr_accessor :number_of_ferry_trips
attr_accessor :passengers
def initialize
@passengers = []
@current_side_of_river = 'N'
@number_of_ferry_trips = 0
end
def add_passenger(direction_headed)
passenger = Passenger.new(direction_headed)
@passengers << passenger
end
def ferry_person(person)
person.moved = true
switch_river_side
end
def ferry_all_passengers
not_moved = Proc.new { |p| !p.moved? }
while @passengers.select(¬_moved).size > 0
passengers_left= @passengers.select(¬_moved)
make_trip_south_and_north(passengers_left)
end
end
def make_trip_south_and_north(passengers)
['S','N'].each do |direction|
by_direction = Proc.new { |p| p.direction_headed == direction }
ferry_trip(passengers.select(&by_direction))
end
end
def ferry_trip(passengers)
if passengers.count > 0
ferry_person( passengers.first )
elsif passengers_left_to_move?
@number_of_ferry_trips += 1
end
end
def passengers_left_to_move?
@passengers.select{ |passenger| !passenger.moved? }.size > 0
end
def switch_river_side
@current_side_of_river = (@current_side_of_river == 'N') ? 'S' : 'N'
@number_of_ferry_trips += 1
end
end
I’ve spent the last 9 months leading, training, cajoling, inspiring and refining 30 new software engineers during their first major software engineering jobs.
This has been an amazing learning experience and has led me to a whole new appreciation of how much value I can add as 1 person vs. the value I can add in helping a large number of engineers achieve quality in their job.
I’ve also received a lot of positive feedback from these engineers and others around me and I am humbled by how many folks have told me how much they admire my passion for quality which is behind everything I do.
I’ve been honored to see these new engineers grow fantastically in their first few months. I’ve treated them with respect and humility and I’ve put their growth and success as my main goal. It’s paid off fantastically.
I’ve focused on Total Candor so I can be a kick-ass boss which happens to also be the name of a great book I recently read . Other recent great reads have included:
I am now even more charged to chart the right course and do the right things!
Fix the hard problems first – Joe Armstrong
When I’m just writing the first version of a program, I tend to put everything in one file. And then I start seeing structure in that file. Like there’s this block of things that are pretty similar… and the API sorts of builds up organically that way. The design process is definitely on an on-going thing; you never know what the design is until the program is done. So I prefer to get my feet wet as soon as possible; get something on the screen so I can look at it sideways. – Zawinski
Not knowing something doesn’t mean you’re dumb – it just means you don’t know it yet – Zawinski
It doesn’t matter how good you are; you can’t get an API right until you’ve tried to code to it – Joshua Bloch
How to Debug? print statements – multiple authors.
I’m really quick on the trigger for throwing stuff out – Ken Thompson
That was how I learned programming – basically taking one program that I made up myself and sitting at a machine over a period of some weeks, and kept getting it to work a little better and a littler better – Robert Knuth
So if I can get my kicks out of finding errors then I just have to make sure that I forget that I was the author of the program. I try to imagine that someone else was the author – Robert Knuth
When a person or an organization wishes to change, one of the hardest parts of that change can be allowing yourself to accept what others see in you and your organization.
Command and Control is a good example of this.
Using the term “Command and Control” and categorizing ones current organization as that is a very risky and provocative approach. It is almost guaranteed to annoy folks who will frequently reject the categorization as unfair and inaccurate and feel that it is missing the point and missing the value of current processes within in the organization that have been learned over time and through hard lessons.
Here’s a different approach to identifying command and control:
When a person is asked for information and the response is “sure. I will ask [other people] about that and get back to you” this is a different indicator, but a clear indicator non the less, that command and control is at play. When the person who is initially asked for the connection remains in the loop they are seeking to validate their position and ego. This is an uncomfortable fact that I have seen in every organization and industry I have worked in over the past 30 years. It is defended in many ways as reasonable, practical and simply common sense. Modern and re-invented organizations have learned however that this doesn’t work well at all in today modern, agile, flexible world.
In many agile organizations, different approaches are taken when this situation (a person seeks information) comes up:
“To the extent permitted by applicable laws, you hereby waive any moral rights you have in any User Content.”
I understand legal rights but waiving my moral rights?
really ?
– Join your airlines frequent flyer program
– Join your hotels frequent visitor program
– Install the hotel mobile app on your phone
– Install the airlines mobile app on your phone
– Enable your phone as the room key if available
– Have and charge a powercell for device charging
– Upgrade seats soon after booking instead of at check-in
– Use airplane mode anywhere when you need to save battery power
– Avoid “basic economy” tickets on orbitz, expedia, etc. – no upgrades
– Buy wifi access ahead of time and be sure your login works before flying
How could I not have known about this for 10 years !
in
.irbrc require 'irb/completion'
https://coderwall.com/p/mnwcog/create-new-github-repo-from-command-line
or, as I did at the command line:
$ curl -u durrantm https://api.github.com/user/repos -d “{\”name\”:\”mastering-docker\”}”
40 refactoring changes, 1 functional change – and even that included a refactor!
This used to be hard. Take weeks and months. Now the only hard piece is believing just how easy it is. I did the following in a matter of minutes.
So now I can:
Have a master document in Confluence which refers to tickets which are links to…
^ Jira tickets which you can click on and immediately click through to see commits
^which you can click through to see
^ Github Change Requests which you can learn about because when they are changed by developers you get…
^ Jobs submitted to CircleCI which have…
^ Slack notifications in public channels
With most of the integration work boiling down to:
Many companies have gone or are undergoing Agile transformations.
There is typically a large focus on the dramatic change for regular ‘workers’ in how they do their daily activities.
One item that can easily be over-looked however is the change in daily practices for Management. Some new organizations have eliminated all ‘supervisor’ and ‘manager’ roles, just leaving developers and a director. Other, existing organizations that are transforming to Agile have difficult decisions to make about how to retool their management.
Failing to recognize and change can lead to management continuing to use waterfall approaches and not understanding the new empowerment model for workers.
Some of the mis-matched approaches seen in this area are:
Tips for Tech for Frequent Travelers
I wondered if Google has something for notes, so I searched and found Keep.
bye bye evernote
oh and “btw” worried about that MS paint news? No fears. You can ‘add drawing’ and do that too:
The Ultimate Quality Challenge has become clear to me.
Here’s some of the things that I’ve found it is NOT about:
Don’t get me wrong, all the above are critical to Quality Engineering.
However I am increasingly finding that the Ultimate Quality Challenge is one thing – hiring competent and passionate quality engineers. This is a prerequisite to all of the above quality activities – without actual people, nothing is implemented (even automation!)
Hiring engineers in the quality space is very challenging for a number of reasons:
I want to help change that!
Some of the things I am doing:
Scoping an object locally
var {pref1, pref2} = user // user is object w/ keys pref1, pref2
var function_x = ({firstname}) => {
full_name = `${firstname} of boston`
}
var [first_town] = ['Boston', 'Salem', 'Ham'] // 1st_town= Boston var [,,last_town] = ['Boston', 'Salem', 'Ham'] // lst_town= Ham
I’m guessing that name is going to change…
The opposite of destructuring.
Puts objects and methods together.
var shell='bread'
var filling='butter'
var sandwich = {shell, filling}
// New object 'sandwich' with contents
// {shell: 'bread', filling: 'butter'}
// Method is 'toast'
var toast = function() { console.log('Toast it for {time}') }
var toastedSandwich = {shell, filling, time}
toastedSandwich.toast
...“The actual values from an array (not the array itself)
var arr1 = ['Buick', 'Ford'] var arr2= ['Edsel', 'Dodge'] var arr3 = [...arr1, ...arr2]
function direction(...args) {}
The key-value attributes from an object, not the object itself, e.g.
obj1={a:1, b:2}
obj2={c:3, d:4}
obj3={...obj1, ...obj2}
If you are an application or automation developer in the Ruby space I highly recommend these (selected from several hundred books)
Enjoying this once again.
A great way to really understand what’s going on in your browser
If QE’s can aborb most of this (it’s dense – be warned) they’ll be in a good spot with devs!
I suggest a chapter a day (=13 days)
Broken links can affect your ranking with Search Engines
LinkChecker – https://wummel.github.io/linkchecker/ – is a free, GPL licensed website validator. LinkChecker checks links in web documents or full websites. It runs on Python 2.x
Includes both gui client and command line option, e.g.
linkchecker http://www.example.org/myhomepage/
Objects have prototype methods which are shared for all instances
Useful for methods that apply to all instances
Person.prototype.some_method_name= function() {
commands;
};
Avoid for properties that store state data, e.g. arrays with elements managed by various methods.
When you need to define multiple methods on the prototype you can use the format below, however they should also define the constructor as shown so that the prototype is Person and not just Object:
Person.prototype = {
constructor: Person,
first_method: function() {...},
second_method: function() {...};
};
You can add methods to prototypes for all objects including builtins objects such as Array, String, etc.
Inheritance is through above Prototype Chain, e.g.
var instance2 = Object.create(instance1, {
name: {
value: "some_new_thing",
...
}
});
next
Commonly used in javascript for modules.
Note surrounding parens and parens at end
var person = (function() {
var age = 25; // This is private
return { ... } // These are closures and are public
}());
var person = (function() {
var age = 25;
function x() {...}
return { x: x, ...}; // Note same name (x)
}());
this.getAge = function () { return age; };
function thing(p1,p2) {
code
return value;
}
vs
var thing = function(p1, p2) {
code
return value;
};
(function(){ /* code */ }()); // Like this
(function(){ /* code */ })(); // or thisfunction abc() {
if (arguments.length === 0) { this code; }
else {
other_code; } }
some_function.call(this, "text")
A particular value for ‘this’ and specific parameters
some_function.apply(this, "text")
A particular value for ‘this’ and, specifically, an array for any parameters
some_function.bind(this, "text")
var tree = {
_name: "Oak",
get name() {
console.log("here1");
return this._name;
},
set name(value) {
console.log('here2');
this._name = value;
}
};
Retrieving Property Attributes
Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor()
Constructors use ‘new’ to create a new instance of a method.
Functions should be capitalized when they are used as constructors – you will be creating new instances of them with ‘new’.
All functions have an internal prototype property
You can check for it with object.hasOwnProperty(name)
Rubyists may find its usage has some similarities to Ruby’s class level methods.
When an object (function w/new constructor) has methods that are shared by all instances use a prototype function for the Object
YourObject.prototype.yourFunctionName = function() {...}
When an object (function w/new constructor) has attribute values that are shared by all instances use a prototype attribute for the Object
YourObject.prototype.yourVariableName = value
There’s a lot to know in order to understand what’s going on with the javascript landscape for Quality Engineering testers, especially for those involved in writing browser automation. One of the biggest complaints recently is literally not knowing where to start, what the dozens of acronyms and terms mean and also what to study and in what logical order to study it.
There is also getting your head around the current use of Object Oriented javascript. When I first used javascript it was all about making simple web page effects. Now it is a very popular web language with Object Oriented functionality, used for building full fledged internet applications and used server side with technologies like Node.
Understanding a brief history of javascript is helpful to understanding how to use javascript today and what it means to write javascript tests:
What Object Oriented means in todays javascript is explained well in the following book. I’ve read many javascript books and as someone with existing knowledge in both Scripting and Object Oriented languages, this is definitely the book that’s been most helpful to me:
Another interesting aspect of Javascript Testing is that that are elements for all 4 of the Agile Testing Quadrants – Unit, Integrated, Performance and Exploratory.
For BDD there is:
For user acceptance testing there is web page testing with Selenium using javascript, e.g.
For TDD/BDD in Ruby there is:
There is also javascript based Selenium testing for javascript frameworks such as AngularJS:
There is also ‘headless’ browser testing which attempts to address the speed issue of any browser based testing by not actual bringing up a browser window. Its success will depend on the specifics for a given web site / application.
Then there is the testing of actual javascript itself. This is primarily about unit testing javascript code. Here we have two broad areas, one is Node based and one is not. Node is about server side javascript. You have a ‘node’ server running that responds to requests. You can build and use frameworks such as Angular and React and you can also use server side javascript that is compiled into regular javascript which is then sent to browser clients.
As you advance in javascript testing you’ll also want to get a good understanding about spies, mocks and stubs:
As you advance further you may find it useful to understand and use chai – an assertation library for all those ‘should’, ‘expect’ and ‘assert’ statements!
Apache Bench is a (node based) option here.
https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/programs/ab.html
“ab is a tool for benchmarking your Apache Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) server. It is designed to give you an impression of how your current Apache installation performs. This especially shows you how many requests per second your Apache installation is capable of serving.”
You can explore, debug and test javascript by using the browser Console tab to interact with the browser and issue commands
You can also use Node at the terminal command line by simply typing node or nodejs
Tests that pass are good. right?
That is such a given that it may seem strange to even question it! So here goes:
There it is. Failing tests. A good thing. ok I’ve said it.
I’m already removing the arrows, ow! so let me explain:
The idea here is that tests that never ever fail indicate a problem. Tests are supposed to break – when you break the application. After all, that’s why they are there – as safety rails so you can develop in comfort, changing the application as needed and letting you know when your changes break existing functionality.
So what happens when they do break? Well here’s where the quality of the test itself also comes into play. It’s not too hard to write tests that, when they do break (yeah!) they give meaningful information.
Unfortunately it’s also fairly easy to come up with tests that break and tell you something like this:
“Expected true to be true but was false instead”
Sound good? Can you fix that now? Of course not.
So write a test whose failure looks like this:
“Expected the child to be a member of the customers family but they are not listed in the family plan” – now that’s something you can work with !
This is also support for the concept of making sure your tests fails first, i.e. Red, Green, Refactor. Making sure it fails first provides an opportunity to hone and refine the failure message.
The main caveat to this idea is that tests, if well written, act as documentation So even if they never fail they can still fulfill that function. Indeed I have learned about more than one system just from reading the test suite!
A downside to such ‘wordy’ tests is that we can have test code descriptions that don’t match, or get out of sync, with the code being called. This is why we avoid program comments whenever possible, in favor of meaningfully named code objects and function descriptions. However I believe the upside of good and meaningful tests outweighs this downside for these tests.
Goals:
Guide to being a trump supporter on TV
– Don’t EVER actually answer the question. Your ONLY goal is to get airtime and then express and expand on the presidents views
– When pressed on questions, find an unrelated incident in the questioners past to talk about
– When pressed more, personally insult the questioner. Find a physical characteristic you can belittle
– When pressed more, find a general thing you disagree about politically and start talking about that
– When pressed more, switch roles and start asking questions instead of answering them
– When pressed with more with facts reply with different facts about somewhat similar topics.
– Wait for the ads to come
– Repeat
Perfected By Kellyann Conway and Jeffrey Lord and Scottie Nell Hughes
Such a shame they have no morals, but hey, find this and I’ll be next on their list !
Mega Meta List of Automated Software Testing Information: https://www.smartsheet.com/automation-testing-software
https://testing.googleblog.com/
Google’s blog – mind blowing information about flaky tests
Highlights:
“our robot army has been working hard at fuzzing, processing 10 trillion test inputs a day”
“Google has around 4.2 million tests that run on our continuous integration system. Of these, around 63 thousand have a flaky run over the course of a week. While this represents less than 2% of our tests, it still causes significant drag on our engineers.”
http://www.ontestautomation.com/
Avoid “Tests that use the UI to test business logic that’s exposed through an API (use an API-level test instead!) or implemented in code (how about those unit tests?). Not testing at the right level supports shallow feedback and increased execution time. Goodbye fast feedback.”
https://www.joecolantonio.com/2017/05/25/grass-greener-testers/
“There are no magic, unicorn-filled companies employing all-knowing developers who are creating perfect software.”
“How often have you walked onto a project and everyone on the team got excited and jumped up and down saying how happy they are to have you there?” (i.e. few)
http://angryweasel.com/blog/
“One thing I consistently ask teams to do during feature design is to include how they plan to measure the value of the feature to customers or business value. Often, only a proxy metric is available, but those work way better than nothing at all.”
Searching:
/ Search forwards in file
? Search backwards in file
f Next on the line
n Next in the search
N Previous in the search
set ic Set search to be case sensitive (default)
set noic Set search to be case insensitive
/^foo Search for text ‘foo’ at start of line
/bar$ Search for text ‘bar’ at end of line
/\<foo\> Search for the word foo
/[a-c]blob Search for the text ablob, bblob or cblob
It’s always scary to tear my desktop apart, but it’s time for a new video card…
Wait, where does the yellow cable go? (actually it didn’t plug into the new video card, ha!)
Power on… Drum roll…
Success !
Todays refreshers:
cc – change whole line
c$ change to end of line
:%s/this/that/gc – Change ‘this’ to ‘that’ globally in the file and on the line & confirm each
:1,100 s/this/that – Change this to that for lines 1 through 100
:e! – Reset all edits made in current file
vi + [file] – Edit and go to end of file
vi +/string [file] – Edit and go to string
cc – change whole line
c$ – change to end of line
:%s/this/that/cg – globally change and confirm each one
:n,m s/this/that – change within this range of lines
vi +/this_string – open and go to string
vi + – open and go to end of line
:e! – sreset all changes
