Investigate a better Go test framework

[sylvinus]

Being used to the awesome pytest, I have a hard time with Go's testing package.

Are there friendlier alternatives that would help us enjoy writing more tests (which we need)? What about http://labix.org/gocheck ?

[sylvinus]

Adding coverage as part of this issue would be great too! We could send it to coveralls like we do for cosr-back https://coveralls.io/github/commonsearch/cosr-back

[ghost]

@sylvinus I would use the standard testing library, but modify the tests. Now there are too many repetitions. E.g. bangs_test.go:

if DetectBang("", "en") != "" {
    t.Fatal("Empty search")
}

if DetectBang("!a littlebits", "en") != "https://www.amazon.com/s/?field-keywords=littlebits" {
    t.Fatal("Amazon bang EN")
}

if DetectBang("!a littlebits", "fr") != "https://www.amazon.fr/s/?field-keywords=littlebits" {
    t.Fatal("Amazon bang FR")
}

if DetectBang("!w littlebits", "en") != "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=littlebits" {
    t.Fatal("Wikipedia bang EN (via any)")
}

Instead that could be:

for _, v := range []struct{
    query, lang, exp string
}{
    {"", "en", ""},
    {"!a littlebits", "en", "https://www.amazon.com/s/?field-keywords=littlebits"},
    {"!a littlebits", "fr", "https://www.amazon.fr/s/?field-keywords=littlebits"},
    {"!w littlebits", "en", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=littlebits"},
} {
    if res := DetectBang(v.query, v.lang); res != v.exp {
        t.Errorf(`Query "%s" (%s). Expected: "%s", got: "%s".`, v.query, v.lang, v.exp, res)
    }
}

Now you can add new tests without extra boilerplate code and modify existing ones much easier.

[sylvinus]

Thanks @alkchr.

I think it still looks more complicated than it could be. Feels like we're re-implementing a testing package.

With gocheck for instance, the inner loop would only be c.Assert(DetectBang(v.query, v.lang), Equals, v.exp)?

[ghost]

@sylvinus We're not reimplementing anything. Anonymous structs is a frequently used technique.

As for gocheck's Assert function, it reduces the number of LOC required. But it doesn't print the input parameters (query and lang) of the failed test. In case of TestBangs it is not critical, but what if your tests are:

{
    {"...", "en", "english_version"},
    {"...", "unknown_language", "english_version"},
}

In both cases expected output is english_version. If Assert shows Expected "english_version", got "french_version", how do you know which of the tests above failed?

[wumpus]

I'm OK with anonymous structs, that's how most of blekko's unit tests and integration tests were expressed. And yes, clear explanations of what failed is very important.