What to test after defining Appengine Datastore models

Question

I am starting an App Engine application. I started defining some simple models I will need. I want to write tests for my application (that would be the first time I've done that). I cannot see what I should be testing for. I already looked to how to do this (https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/python/tools/localunittesting), but I just don't know what to test...

Here is my code so far:

class User(db.Model):
    email = db.EmailProperty()
    name = db.StringProperty()

class Service(db.Model):
    name = db.StringProperty(required=True)

class UserService(db.Model):
    user_id = db.ReferenceProperty(User,
                                   required=True,
                                   collection_name='user_services')
    service_id = db.ReferenceProperty(Service,
                                      required=True)
    access_token = db.StringProperty(required=True)
    refresh_token = db.StringProperty(required=True)

class LocalServer(db.Model):
    authentication_token = db.StringProperty(required=True)

class Task(db.Model):
    user_service_id = db.Reference(UserService,
                                   required=True,
                                   collection_name='tasks')
    local_server_id = db.ReferenceProperty(LocalServer,
                                           required=True,
                                           collection_name='tasks')
    creation_date = db.DateTimeProperty(auto_now_add=True,
                                        required=True)
    completion_date = db.DateTimeProperty(required=True)
    number_of_files = db.IntegerProperty(required=True)
    status = db.StringProperty(required=True,
                               choices=('created', 'validated', 'in_progress', 'done'))

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:09

Quoting Wikipedia:

Intuitively, one can view a unit as the smallest testable part of an application.

Now, I don't know exactly what your application is supposed to do, but in general you don't have to test each specific class/model. What does this mean? Well, you don't need to test a feature like this: "what happens when I add two users, and then I want to filter them by a specific name?". You don't have to test it, because in that case you would test a GAE function, .filter(). Now, why should you test it? :) Google pays its developers for that!

But what if you write a "filter" method? What if you customize the filter() method? Then you must test them. I suggest you to read this answer. The question is about Django models, but actually it is valid for every framework or programming language.

Thank you. It does make sense, and the posted answer was helpful ;) — seven-down, May 01 '13 at 08:41

What to test after defining Appengine Datastore models

1 Answers1