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Best Practices for iOS Unit & Integration Testing
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Alex Miller
Posted on Oct 26, 2023, 10:30 AM

Hey everyone,

I'm looking to refine our testing approach for our iOS applications. We currently have a decent set of unit tests, but I feel we could be doing more with integration tests, especially for complex workflows involving networking and data persistence.

What are your go-to strategies for:

  • Structuring your test suites (unit vs. integration vs. UI)?
  • Mocking dependencies effectively (e.g., network calls, Core Data)?
  • Ensuring test reliability and speed?
  • Tools or frameworks you find indispensable?

Any insights or examples would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

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Sarah Kim
Replied on Oct 26, 2023, 11:15 AM

Great question, Alex! We've had a lot of success with XCTest's built-in capabilities.

For integration tests, we often use URLSessionMock or OHHTTPStubs to stub network responses. This allows us to test our networking layer and API clients in isolation without hitting live servers. For data persistence, we use an in-memory Core Data stack or Realm's in-memory configuration for faster tests.

We typically separate tests into `UnitTests` and `IntegrationTests` targets. UI tests are in a separate `UITests` target to keep them isolated and manageable.

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John Doe
Replied on Oct 27, 2023, 09:00 AM

Echoing Sarah's points! Using dependency injection is key. It makes it much easier to swap out real implementations for mocks during tests.

For speeding up tests, especially UI tests which can be slow, consider:

  • Running tests in parallel (XCTest supports this).
  • Optimizing test data setup and teardown.
  • Focusing UI tests on critical user flows rather than every single button press.

We also use SnapshotTesting for UI consistency checks, which is fantastic!

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