Forem: shyamajp

Debugging `make: 'build' is up to date.`

shyamajp — Wed, 17 Nov 2021 20:08:49 +0000

TL;DR - Rename your directory build something else

Failure

Makefile

build:
    docker build . -t my-basic-app

Look. I have the most basic app, Dockerfile and Makefile. Why can't it just run make build command properly as I defined in Makefile?

shyamajp@ubuntu:~/Projects/my-basic-app$ make build
make: 'build' is up to date.

Debug

Let's get rid of this stupid error. At the root level, you must have a directory named build. That's why you see this unexpected behavior.

In my case, I can change outDir name from build to dist to avoid this specific conflict.
tsconfig.json

{
    "outDir": "dist"
}

Conclusion

Do not name your directory same as Makefile target. Be careful with names like build and test, which are often used for both Makefile targets and directory names.

I know this is a noob question but I've done it a few times already and I thought I might as well document it somewhere for myself. I hope this helps other newbie folks like me.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or suggestions to make this article better. Thank you for reading. Happy Coding!

Testing Node.js/Express app + MongoDB with jest and supertest

shyamajp — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 21:35:18 +0000

Introduction

I find it quite hard to find the right steps when you already have a set of technologies in your project, and as the title goes, my target audience are those who already know how to develop a backend application in Express + MongoDB but not how to write tests for it. If you are still with me, let's get started.

Tech Stack

Node.js JavaScript runtime environment outside of browser
Express Backend application framework for Node.js
MongoDB NoSQL database like JSON.
Jest JavsScript testing framework maintained by Facebook
supertest npm package that helps test HTTP

Writing tests

Steps

Prepare a mongodb in memory server for testing
Write tests with jest and supertest
(Optional) Set up NODE_ENV to test

Prepare a mongodb in memory server for testing

First, install the in-memory-mongodb-server with the command below.
npm i -D mongodb-memory-server

I put all test files inside __test__ folder but feel free to modify the path as needed.

/__tests__/config/database.js

import mongoose from "mongoose";
import { MongoMemoryServer } from "mongodb-memory-server";
import { MongoClient } from "mongodb";

let connection: MongoClient;
let mongoServer: MongoMemoryServer;

const connect = async () => {
  mongoServer = await MongoMemoryServer.create();
  connection = await MongoClient.connect(mongoServer.getUri(), {});
};

const close = async () => {
  await mongoose.connection.dropDatabase();
  await mongoose.connection.close();
  await mongoServer.stop();
};

const clear = async () => {
  const collections = mongoose.connection.collections;
  for (const key in collections) {
    await collections[key].deleteMany({});
  }
};
export default { connect, close, clear };

As you do with ordinary MongoDB, you connect to the database before running tests and you close connection after running tests. You can also nuke the data in database using clear. I use default export here to import the module as db and use the functions like db.connect() or db.clear(), but it is totally up to you or TypeScript settings.

Write tests with jest and supertest

I assume most of you already have installed the testing dependencies, but if not, please run the command below.
npm i -D jest supertest

import request from "supertest";
import app from "../src/index";
import db from "./config/database";

const agent = request.agent(app);

beforeAll(async () => await db.connect());
afterEach(async () => await db.clear());
afterAll(async () => await db.close());

describe("tags", () => {
  describe("POST /tags", () => {
    test("successful", async () => {
      const res = await agent.post("/tags").send({ name: "test-tag"});
      expect(res.statusCode).toEqual(201);
      expect(res.body).toBeTruthy();
    });
  });
});

As mentioned in the previous step, you can make use of beforeAll, afterEach, and afterAll hooks for the database connections/modifications. If you want to keep the data that you create with POST, you can remove db.clear() from afterEach hook so you can interact with the same object for other methods like PUT or DELETE.

Set up `NODE_ENV` to `test`

For better maintanance, I have passed NODE_ENV=test just before tests.

package.json

"scripts": {
  "test": "export NODE_ENV=test && jest --forceExit --runInBand",
}

In order to avoid port collision, my express app will not occupy the port while testing. And I use dotenv for dealing with environment variables for those who aren't familiar with this.

/src/index.ts

if (process.env.NODE_ENV !== "test") {
  app.listen(port, () => {
    console.log(`Express app listening at ${process.env.BASE_URI}:${port}`);
  });
}

Conclusion

In the end, it is all about the database setup for testing. And I hope this post was right for you.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or suggestions to make this article better. Thank you for reading. Happy Coding!

Passing environment variables to GitHub Actions using dotenv

shyamajp — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 20:43:24 +0000

TL;DR - Create .env file using GitHub Secrets before running tests in your workflow file

Introduction

My backend project, written in TypeScript/Express, uses dotenv for environment variables. dotenv package takes variables in from .env file, but when I looked for a solution, everyone had env or with inside workflow file, which never worked for me. So I had to figure out something else.

Steps

Add secrets to your repository
Add a step to create .env file inside your workflow

Add secrets

Go to repository's Settings page
Go to Secrets from the sidebar menu
Click New repository secret to add secrets
Note that a secret cannot start with a prefix GITHUB_.

Add a step to create `.env` file in your GitHub workflow

Now that you have all secrets set up, you can access to them by ${{ secrets.YOUR_SECRET_NAME }}. Below is a working example workflow file.

/.github/workflows/test.yml

name: Run tests

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
  pull_request:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    strategy:
      matrix:
        node-version: [14.x]

    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v2

      - name: Use Node.js ${{ matrix.node-version }}
        uses: actions/setup-node@v2
        with:
          node-version: ${{ matrix.node-version }}
          cache: "npm"

      - name: Create .env file
        run: |
          touch .env
          echo MONGO_URI = ${{ secrets.MONGO_URI }} >> .env
          echo PORT = ${{ secrets.PORT }} >> .env
          echo BASE_URI = ${{ secrets.BASE_URI }} >> .env
          echo PASSPORT_GITHUB_CALLBACK_URL = ${{ secrets.PASSPORT_GITHUB_CALLBACK_URL }} >> .env
          echo PASSPORT_GITHUB_CLIENT_ID = ${{ secrets.PASSPORT_GITHUB_CLIENT_ID }} >> .env
          echo PASSPORT_GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET = ${{ secrets.PASSPORT_GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET }} >> .env
          echo SESSION_SECRET = ${{ secrets.SESSION_SECRET }} >> .env

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm ci

      - name: Build
        run: npm run build --if-present

      - name: Run tests
        run: npm test

For explanation, I just renamed some steps from the template for more readability and added the Create .env file step with touch and echo. This will not commit .env to the repository nor publish your secrets. Your secrets will remain secret.

Conclusion

Basically adding a new step to create .env file before running tests will do the job, because that's how dotenv works.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or suggestions to make this article better. Thank you for reading. Happy Coding!

Forem: shyamajp

Debugging `make: 'build' is up to date.`

Failure

Debug

Conclusion

Testing Node.js/Express app + MongoDB with jest and supertest

Introduction

Tech Stack

Writing tests

Steps

Prepare a mongodb in memory server for testing

Write tests with jest and supertest

Set up NODE_ENV to test

Conclusion

Passing environment variables to GitHub Actions using dotenv

Introduction

Steps

Add secrets

Add a step to create .env file in your GitHub workflow

Conclusion

Set up `NODE_ENV` to `test`

Add a step to create `.env` file in your GitHub workflow