# testfixtures [![GoDoc](https://godoc.org/github.com/go-testfixtures/testfixtures?status.svg)][doc] > ***Warning***: this package will wipe the database data before loading the fixtures! It is supposed to be used on a test database. Please, double check if you are running it against the correct database. > **TIP**: There are options not described in this README page. It's > recommended that you also check [the documentation][doc]. Writing tests is hard, even more when you have to deal with an SQL database. This package aims to make writing functional tests for web apps written in Go easier. Basically this package mimics the ["Ruby on Rails' way"][railstests] of writing tests for database applications, where sample data is kept in fixtures files. Before the execution of every test, the test database is cleaned and the fixture data is loaded into the database. The idea is running tests against a real database, instead of relying in mocks, which is boring to setup and may lead to production bugs not being caught in the tests. ## Installation First, import it like this: ```go import ( "github.com/go-testfixtures/testfixtures/v3" ) ``` ## Usage Create a folder for the fixture files. Each file should contain data for a single table and have the name `.yml`: ``` myapp/ myapp.go myapp_test.go ... fixtures/ posts.yml comments.yml tags.yml posts_tags.yml ... ``` The file would look like this (it can have as many record you want): ```yml # comments.yml - id: 1 post_id: 1 content: A comment... author_name: John Doe author_email: john@doe.com created_at: 2020-12-31 23:59:59 updated_at: 2020-12-31 23:59:59 - id: 2 post_id: 2 content: Another comment... author_name: John Doe author_email: john@doe.com created_at: 2020-12-31 23:59:59 updated_at: 2020-12-31 23:59:59 # ... ``` An YAML object or array will be converted to JSON. It will be stored on a native JSON type like JSONB on PostgreSQL or as a TEXT or VARCHAR column on other databases. ```yml - id: 1 post_attributes: author: John Due author_email: john@due.com title: "..." tags: - programming - go - testing post: "..." ``` If you need to write raw SQL, probably to call a function, prefix the value of the column with `RAW=`: ```yml - id: 1 uuid_column: RAW=uuid_generate_v4() postgis_type_column: RAW=ST_GeomFromText('params...') created_at: RAW=NOW() updated_at: RAW=NOW() ``` Your tests would look like this: ```go package myapp import ( "database/sql" _ "github.com/lib/pq" "github.com/go-testfixtures/testfixtures/v3" ) var ( db *sql.DB fixtures *testfixtures.Loader ) func TestMain(m *testing.M) { var err error // Open connection to the test database. // Do NOT import fixtures in a production database! // Existing data would be deleted. db, err = sql.Open("postgres", "dbname=myapp_test") if err != nil { ... } fixtures, err := testfixtures.New( testfixtures.Database(db), // You database connection testfixtures.Dialect("postgres"), // Available: "postgresql", "timescaledb", "mysql", "mariadb", "sqlite" and "sqlserver" testfixtures.Directory("testdata/fixtures"), // the directory containing the YAML files ) if err != nil { ... } os.Exit(m.Run()) } func prepareTestDatabase() { if err := fixtures.Load(); err != nil { ... } } func TestX(t *testing.T) { prepareTestDatabase() // Your test here ... } func TestY(t *testing.T) { prepareTestDatabase() // Your test here ... } func TestZ(t *testing.T) { prepareTestDatabase() // Your test here ... } ``` Alternatively, you can use the `Files` option, to specify which files you want to load into the database: ```go fixtures, err := testfixtures.New( testfixtures.Database(db), testfixtures.Dialect("postgres"), testfixtures.Files( "fixtures/orders.yml", "fixtures/customers.yml", ), ) if err != nil { ... } fixtures, err := testfixtures.NewFiles(db, &testfixtures.PostgreSQL{}, "fixtures/orders.yml", "fixtures/customers.yml", // add as many files you want ) if err != nil { ... } ``` With `Paths` option, you can specify the paths that fixtures will load from. Path can be directory or file. If directory, we will search YAML files in it. ```go fixtures, err := testfixtures.New( testfixtures.Database(db), testfixtures.Dialect("postgres"), testfixtures.Paths( "fixtures/orders.yml", "fixtures/customers.yml", "common_fixtures/users" ), ) if err != nil { ... } ``` ## Security check In order to prevent you from accidentally wiping the wrong database, this package will refuse to load fixtures if the database name (or database filename for SQLite) doesn't contains "test". If you want to disable this check, use: ```go testfixtures.New( ... testfixtures.DangerousSkipTestDatabaseCheck(), ) ``` ## Sequences For PostgreSQL, this package also resets all sequences to a high number to prevent duplicated primary keys while running the tests. The default is 10000, but you can change that with: ```go testfixtures.New( ... testfixtures.ResetSequencesTo(10000), ) ``` Or, if you want to skip the reset of sequences entirely: ```go testfixtures.New( ... testfixtures.SkipResetSequences(), ) ``` ## Compatible databases ### PostgreSQL / TimescaleDB This package has two approaches to disable foreign keys while importing fixtures for PostgreSQL databases: #### With `DISABLE TRIGGER` This is the default approach. For that use: ```go testfixtures.New( ... testfixtures.Dialect("postgres"), // or "timescaledb" ) ``` With the above snippet this package will use `DISABLE TRIGGER` to temporarily disabling foreign key constraints while loading fixtures. This work with any version of PostgreSQL, but it is **required** to be connected in the database as a SUPERUSER. You can make a PostgreSQL user a SUPERUSER with: ```sql ALTER USER your_user SUPERUSER; ``` #### With `ALTER CONSTRAINT` This approach don't require to be connected as a SUPERUSER, but only work with PostgreSQL versions >= 9.4. Try this if you are getting foreign key violation errors with the previous approach. It is as simple as using: ```go testfixtures.New( ... testfixtures.Dialect("postgres"), testfixtures.UseAlterConstraint(), ) ``` Tested using the [github.com/lib/pq](https://github.com/lib/pq) driver. ### MySQL / MariaDB Just make sure the connection string have [the multistatement parameter](https://github.com/go-sql-driver/mysql#multistatements) set to true, and use: ```go testfixtures.New( ... testfixtures.Dialect("mysql"), // or "mariadb" ) ``` Tested using the [github.com/go-sql-driver/mysql](https://github.com/go-sql-driver/mysql) driver. ### SQLite SQLite is also supported. It is recommended to create foreign keys as `DEFERRABLE` (the default) to prevent problems. See more [on the SQLite documentation](https://www.sqlite.org/foreignkeys.html#fk_deferred). (Foreign key constraints are no-op by default on SQLite, but enabling it is recommended). ```go testfixtures.New( ... testfixtures.Dialect("sqlite"), ) ``` Tested using the [github.com/mattn/go-sqlite3](https://github.com/mattn/go-sqlite3) driver. ### Microsoft SQL Server SQL Server support requires SQL Server >= 2008. Inserting on `IDENTITY` columns are handled as well. Just make sure you are logged in with a user with `ALTER TABLE` permission. ```go testfixtures.New( ... testfixtures.Dialect("sqlserver"), ) ``` Tested using the `mssql` and `sqlserver` drivers from the [github.com/denisenkom/go-mssqldb](https://github.com/denisenkom/go-mssqldb) lib. ## Templating Testfixtures supports templating, but it's disabled by default. Most people won't need it, but it may be useful to dynamically generate data. Enable it by doing: ```go testfixtures.New( ... testfixtures.Template(), // the above options are optional TemplateFuncs(...), TemplateDelims("{{", "}}"), TemplateOptions("missingkey=zero"), TemplateData(...), ) ``` The YAML file could look like this: ```yaml # It's possible generate values... - id: {{sha256 "my-awesome-post}} title: My Awesome Post text: {{randomText}} # ... or records {{range $post := $.Posts}} - id: {{$post.Id}} title: {{$post.Title}} text: {{$post.Text}} {{end}} ``` ## Generating fixtures for a existing database The following code will generate a YAML file for each table of the database into a given folder. It may be useful to boostrap a test scenario from a sample database of your app. ```go dumper, err := testfixtures.NewDumper( testfixtures.DumpDatabase(db), testfixtures.DumpDialect("postgres"), // or your database of choice testfixtures.DumpDirectory("tmp/fixtures"), textfixtures.DumpTables( // optional, will dump all table if not given "posts", "comments", "tags", ) ) if err != nil { ... } if err := dumper.Dump(); err != nil { ... } ``` > This was intended to run in small sample databases. It will likely break if run in a production/big database. ## Gotchas ### Parallel testing This library doesn't yet support running tests in parallel! Running tests in parallel can result in random data being present in the database, which will likely cause tests to randomly/intermittently fail. This is specially tricky since it's not immediately clear that `go test ./...` run tests for each package in parallel. If more than one package use this library, you can face this issue. Please, use `go test -p 1 ./...` or run tests for each package in separated commands to fix this issue. If you're looking into being able to run tests in parallel you can try using testfixtures together with the [txdb][gotxdb] package, which allows wrapping each test run in a transaction. ## CLI We also have a CLI to load fixtures in a given database. Grab it from the [releases page](https://github.com/go-testfixtures/testfixtures/releases) and use it like: ```bash testfixtures -d postgres -c "postgres://user:password@localhost/database" -D testdata/fixtures ``` The connection string changes for each database driver. Use `--help` for all flags. ## Contributing We recommend you to [install Task](https://taskfile.dev/#/installation) and Docker before contributing to this package, since some stuff is automated using these tools. It's recommended to use Docker Compose to run tests, since it runs tests for all supported databases once. To do that you just need to run: ```bash task docker ``` But if you want to run tests locally, copy the `.sample.env` file as `.env` and edit it according to your database setup. You'll need to create a database (likely names `testfixtures_test`) before continuing. Then run the command for the database you want to run tests against: ```bash task test:pg # PostgreSQL task test:mysql # MySQL task test:sqlite # SQLite task test:sqlserver # Microsoft SQL Server ``` GitHub Actions (CI) runs the same Docker setup available locally. ## Alternatives If you don't think using fixtures is a good idea, you can try one of these packages instead: - [factory-go][factorygo]: Factory for Go. Inspired by Python's Factory Boy and Ruby's Factory Girl - [go-txdb (Single transaction SQL driver for Go)][gotxdb]: Use a single database transaction for each functional test, so you can rollback to previous state between tests to have the same database state in all tests - [go-sqlmock][gosqlmock]: A mock for the sql.DB interface. This allow you to unit test database code without having to connect to a real database - [dbcleaner][dbcleaner] - Clean database for testing, inspired by database_cleaner for Ruby [doc]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/go-testfixtures/testfixtures/v3?tab=doc [railstests]: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/testing.html#the-test-database [gotxdb]: https://github.com/DATA-DOG/go-txdb [gosqlmock]: https://github.com/DATA-DOG/go-sqlmock [factorygo]: https://github.com/bluele/factory-go [dbcleaner]: https://github.com/khaiql/dbcleaner