gomega VS Testify

Gomega: is a test assertion library, a vital dependency on Ginkgo.

Gomega is a Go library that allows you to make assertions. In our example, we check if what we got is null, not null, or equal to an exact value, but the gomega library is much richer than that.

Depends on the API and how much testing you need. You want to test your code, not the API's availability or correctness.

But it can be as easy as using a fake http library and mocking the responses, or using a httptest server: https://onsi.github.io/gomega/#ghttp-testing-http-clients

If the API is complicated and you have to write your own fake server, that might not make sense for small projects.

If we do the count, we gather that subtest appear to solve five out of the six problems we identified with the assert library. At this point though, it's important to note that at the time when the assert package was designed, the sub-test feature in Go did not yet exist. Therefore it would have been impossible for that library to embed it into it's design. This is also true for when Gomega and Ginko where designed. If these test frameworks where created now, then most likely some parts of their design would have been done differently. What I am trying to say is that with even the slightest change in the Go language and standard library, completely new ways of designing programs become possible. Especially for new packages without any legacy use-cases to consider. And this brings us to generics.

nil is returned initially, as we're creating user_test.go and using Testify to create tests as we shape the behavior of PostUser. We don't have a DB wired up yet, so the responses will simply be hard-coded structs of what we expect the API to respond with for now to pass the tests.

Bonus: Testify

Testify: Popular framework with assertion functions and mock objects.

Testing: unit and integration tests using Testify and formatted test output using gotestsum

We’ve integrated the excellent testify library with its “assert” functionality to allow for smoother test implementation:

This article is too basic and does not introduce anything you'd encounter in a typical Go project. If you want introduction to Go testing I recommend just reading the official docs https://pkg.go.dev/testing and understanding how to write table driven tests - https://go.dev/wiki/TableDrivenTests.

Going beyond what's built in, get familiar with https://github.com/stretchr/testify as that's used a lot.

Of course, as soon as people saw this, the third-party assertion helper libraries started appearing. The most popular one seems to be testify (although I've never used it). Personally, I thought that the explicit check would be good enough for me, but it's true that after writing a bunch of tests, the boilerplate does seem unnecessarily verbose.

github.com/stretchr/testify

I then verify that there are no issues with writing the body with require.NoError() from the testify toolkit. This will ensure the test fails if something happens to go wrong at this point.

For testing purposes, Go provides a go test command that automatically discovers tests within your application and supports features such as caching and code coverage. However, if you require more advanced testing capabilities such as suites or mocking, you will need to install a toolkit like testify. Overall, while Go provides a highly effective testing experience, it's worth noting that writing tests in Python using pytest is arguably one of the most enjoyable testing experiences I have encountered across all programming languages.