php-easycheck VS Spock

I tend to use anything that offers property-testing, since tests are much shorter to write and uncover lots more hidden assumptions.

My go-to choices per language are:

- Python: Hypothesis https://hypothesis.readthedocs.io/en/latest (also compatible with PyTest)

- Scala: ScalaCheck https://scalacheck.org (also compatible with ScalaTest)

- Javascript/Typescript: JSVerify https://jsverify.github.io

- Haskell: LazySmallCheck2012 https://github.com/UoYCS-plasma/LazySmallCheck2012/blob/mast...

- When I wrote PHP (over a decade ago) there was no decent property-based test framework, so I cobbled one together https://github.com/Warbo/php-easycheck

All of the above use the same basic setup: tests can make universally-quantified statements (e.g. "for all (x: Int), foo(x) == foo(foo(x))"), then the framework checks that statement for a bunch of different inputs.

Most property-checking frameworks generate data randomly (with more or less sophistication). The Haskell ecosystem is more interesting:

- QuickCheck was one of the first property-testing frameworks, using random genrators.

- SmallCheck came later, which enumerates data instead (e.g. testing a Float might use 0, 1, -1, 2, -2, 0.5, -0.5, etc.). That's cute, but QuickCheck tends to exercise more code paths with each input.

- LazySmallCheck builds up test data on-demand, using Haskell's pervasive laziness. Tests are run with an error as input: if they pass, we're done; if they fail, we're done; if they trigger the error, they're run again with slightly more-defined inputs. For example, if the input is supposed to be a list, we try again with the two forms of list: empty and "cons" (the arguments to cons are both errors, to begin with). This exercises even more code paths for each input.

- LazySmallCheck2012 is a more versatile "update" to LazySmallCheck; in particular, it's able to generate functions.

I love using the Spock framework for its simplicity, readability, and maintainability. That's why we use Spock to drive our integration tests.

Well I care a lot that it exists. And many other people I know do as well. Just because you don't seem to like it, you shouldn't imagine everyone else is like you.

Maybe Grails is no longer used as much (like Rails itself), but Groovy found other usages since then, like https://spockframework.org/ and Jenkins pipelines (https://www.jenkins.io/doc/book/pipeline/syntax/). It's not going anywhere, and I see no reason for anyone to be upset about it.

In my opinion it is Spock for Java/Groovy [1]. The amount of functionality and readability you can squeeze from Groovy's DSLesque is absurd. Is basically a full fledged new test language with Java sprinkled as the test contents code

[1]: https://spockframework.org/

Groovy allows you to perform transforms on it's AST. If you look at the Spock framework, they used AST transforms to pull off a lot of the DSL.

Spock and Cucumber exemplify the philosophy of behavior-driven development (BDD). The principle behind BDD is that you must first define the desired result of the added feature in a subject-oriented language before writing any tests. The developers are then given the final documentation.

As a quick demonstration, the following (Spock) test asserts that the client JVM code fails to create an SSL connection with the service. Note that I chose to use Vert.x Web Client to handle interacting with the service, but don't let this decision distract from the core content of this post. Nevertheless, if you haven't used Vert.x, I encourage you to try it out -- especially for building server-side network applications.