capsul-flask/docs/testing.md

## automated testing 

Automated tests could make it safer to contribute code, easier to review new code, and much easier to refactor, or upgrade Python dependencies.

To run tests: 
1. create a Postgres database called `capsulflask_test`
  - e.g.: `docker exec -it 98e1ddfbbffb createdb -U postgres -O postgres capsulflask_test`
    - (`98e1ddfbbffb` is the docker container ID of the postgres container)
2. run `python3 -m unittest`

### Architecture

I tried to make the absolute minimal changes to be able to override settings in tests – possible alternative approaches include accepting an argument to create_app() to define which env file to load, or adding conditional logic to create_app() to pre-load specific settings before running load_dotenv() – but allowing env vars to override dotenv vars seemed cleanest. (Thanks @forest for improving on this approach)

### Creating test databases

One outstanding question is how to initialise/reinitialise the test database.

Currently, the tests rely on the existence of a capsulflask_test database on localhost, accessible by the postgres user with password dev.

I create this manually using:
`docker exec -it 98e1ddfbbffb createdb -U postgres -O postgres capsulflask_test`

where `98e1ddfbbffb` is the docker container ID of the postgres container. 

In between test runs, you can either drop and recreate that database, or manually clear data using:

`docker exec -it 98e1ddfbbffb psql -U postgres capsulflask_test -c "DELETE FROM vm_ssh_authorized_key; DELETE FROM vm_ssh_host_key; DELETE FROM vms; DELETE FROM login_tokens; DELETE FROM ssh_public_keys; DELETE FROM unresolved_btcpay_invoices; DELETE FROM payments; DELETE FROM payment_sessions; DELETE FROM host_operation; DELETE FROM operations;  DELETE FROM api_tokens; DELETE FROM accounts;" `

### Test coverage

This tests the "landing" (public) pages, login, capsul index and creation. I didn't add automated coverage reporting yet, unclear if that seems useful.