Testing

Testing your code is a really good idea! While Acton's type system allows interfaces to be precisely defined, it is imperative that the behavior of a function or actor is tested!

Test functions are automatically discovered by the compiler. Run tests with acton test. Import the testing module and name your test functions starting with _test. The type signature should match the test intended test category. Use the assertion functions available in the testing module. Here is a simple unit test:

Source:

import testing

def _test_simple():
    testing.assertEqual(1, 1)

Run:

acton test

Output:

Building project in /home/user/foo
  Compiling example.act for release
   Finished compilation in   0.016 s
  Final compilation step
   Finished final compilation step in   0.437 s

Tests - module example:
  simple:                OK: 1523 runs in 50.001ms

All 1 tests passed (0.604s)

There are 4 kinds of tests

• unit tests
  • small simple tests of pure functions
• synchronous actor tests
  • involving one or more actors, returning results synchronously
• asynchronous actor tests
  • involving actors but use asynchronous callbacks for return values
• environment tests
  • similar to async actor test in that a callback is used for the return value
  • these tests have access to the full environment via the env argument and can thus communicate with the outside world
    • this is a source of non-determinism so be mindful of this and try to avoid non-deterministic functions to the largest degree possible

When possible, strive to use unit tests rather than actor based tests and strive to avoid env tests.