Rationale
Several classes of tests are created to bring a certain level of completeness in verifying DataSHIELD functionalities. As a whole, the following aspects are checked:
- The functions returns some expected and correct values.
- Some values are returns repetitively the same outcome
- The outcomes for some combinations of arguments provides the expected behaviour
- The disclosure control has not been breached
Syntax and imports
To check the files are syntactically correct and all the relevant imports have been declared, you can use the following function.
devtools::check()
Additional reading: |
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Summary of tests
| Type of test | Short name | Test type | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mathematically correct | math | testthat | Verify some mathematical properties hold for a function. This type of tests relies on the TESTING datasets available locally and the testing virtual machines. |
| Expected values | expt | testthat | Test the outcomes matches some expected values computed by R. This type of tests relies on the TESTING datasets available locally and the testing virtual machines. |
| Smoke | smk | testthat | Is it invokable without catching fire? |
| Smoke expected values | smk_expt | testthat | Expected values style smoke tests, often only checking results are repeated. |
| Arguments checking | arg | testthat | Does it behave as expected when unexpected arguments are passed to functions? |
| Disclosure control | disc | testthat | Does it adhere to the disclosure control settings? |
Testthat contexts
For the testthat tests we use the 'context' to use define types of test. The short name must be from the short name list above and follow the format below. We also allow a modifier to make it more specific (e.g. poisson or gaussian if the function has different behaviour between the two). Additionally we add a 'single' or 'multiple' tag to specify if it is testing a single remote source or multiple remote sources. The context are name using this notation across all the tests.
[name of the function]::[type of test]::[purpose]::[single or multiple]
| Example contexts | Example test file names |
|---|---|
ds.mean::smk | test-smk-ds.mean.R |
ds.mean::multiple | test-smk-ds.mean.R |
ds.mean::smk::gaussian | test-smk-ds.mean.R |
ds.mean::smk::gaussian::single | test-smk-ds.mean.R |
ds.mean::math::something::multiple | test-math-ds.mean.R |
| ds.mean::expt::something::single | test-expt-ds.mean.R |
