Async Testing with Quick and Nimble

In the previous two posts of the Practical Testing in Swift series we had a look at how to test asynchronous code using XCTest, both when dealing with callbacks and delegates. In this post we'll see how to do that using Quick and Nimble, a pair of Swift testing frameworks.

In case you are not familiar with them, let me introduce these two frameworks: Quick provides an RSpec style syntax for Swift testing, so that we can write our tests in a more descriptive way; Nimble brings to the table a rich and powerful set of expectations and matchers. Read this post if you want to know more.

Testing Callbacks with Quick and Nimble

describe("Callback testing") {
    it("can test callbacks using waitUntil") {
        let service = SomeService()

        waitUntil { done in
            service.doSomethingAsync { success in
                expect(success).to(beTrue())
                done()
            }
        }
    }
}

Our method that executes an async operation and receives a closure to run as its callback is called from within a waitUntil block.

waitUntil will wait for one second and fail unless the done function received as its only parameter of its closure is not executed. For this reason the last line of the callback is done(), to notify the test runner that it can stop waiting.

This setup is similar to the XCTestExpectation one that we saw already, but in my opinion easier to reason about, and simpler to write.

This approach can be used to test that a delegate method is called as a result of an async operation being executed by its owner.

Pro tip: you can configure the duration of the wait interval like this:

waitUntil(timeout: 2) { done in
    // ...
    done()
}

Testing Delegate Properties Setting with Quick and Nimble

Testing this kind of behaviour reveals how neat the Nimble expectations are, and how better our test can feel by using this library.

The example below uses the spy delegate technique introduced in the previous post, head over there to read more about it, or checkout the example project for this post to see the full code.

describe("Delegate testing") {
    context("property setting") {
        it("can be tested with toEventually") {
            let something = SomethingWithDelegate()
            let spyDelegate = SpyDelegate()
            something.delegate = spyDelegate

            something.methodResultingInDelegatePropertySet()

            expect(spyDelegate.property).toEventually(equal(42))
        }
    }
}

That's it! toEventually will periodically executes the expectation for a configurable interval of time, and fail only if the expectation is not fulfilled at the last run.

As you might have notice by reading this post, and a number of other articles in this blog, I am a big fan of Quick and Nimble. And how could you not be after seeing the improved quality of tests that they allow you to write?

Regardless of the style you use, being able to write tests for asynchronous code is important to build confidence in your code. I hope these three posts helped you with that. If you have any comments, questions, corrections or would like help with asynchronous code testing leave a comment below, or get in touch on Twitter @mokagio.

Stay tuned for the next article in which well see how to decouple ourselves from the server when testing network related code.

mokacoding