We're trying to write BDD tests using Jasmine, and a common use case we need to handle is:
User A: Does some action
User B: Gets notified after xx ms that the action has happened asynchronously (either via WebPush or polling)
User B: Responds to user A's action
User A: Receives B's response
I'm struggling to build an automated test for this scenario. Our current tool-of-choice is Jasmine, but we're flexible at this point. How can you handle multiple logins simultaneously, especially where there is some delay between responses?
The naive way to do it is to simply poll for each action, and move the scenario on once that action has been detected, with timeouts that fail the test if it takes too long.
In any language which allows for multi-threaded execution, you can create a "Waiter" pattern which waits for the event, then passes execution back to the test once that event has been detected. I've got a C# example here and a Java example here.
Javascript doesn't allow for multi-threaded execution, but it can be faked.
However, I think your biggest problem is that with two logins, you've essentially got two tabs or windows or tabs or apps, and yes, that's going to be hard to manage. You could do it with something that interacts with windows, rather than with the browser (my C# example is from an automation tool that does this), but that would mean adopting a whole different tech stack for the automated scenarios.
You can get around it though by dividing your scenario up into portions:
Given users A and B are running the app
When user A does some action
Then user B should be notified.
For B, use a fake version of the app; stub out everything from the service onwards. You can then check that B is notified via the service's API. You could even just write the things that B receives to a text file, or something similar. It doesn't have to be a real B.
Given users A and B are running the app
When user B receives a notification from user A
Then user B should respond.
Given users A and B are running the app
When user B responds
Then user A should be notified.
For these ones, we're now stubbing out the app for A, notifying as A through the API in the first and verifying notification from B in the 2nd.
Given user A is waiting for user B's response
When A receives user B's response
Then A should (do whatever they would normally do when they receive that response).
And we're back to stubbing out B again, injecting B's response into the API, bringing the journey full-circle.
In each case, we're still verifying that the interaction with the service works; we're just not doing it all at the same time. This should still provide enough confidence that everything is good. It just takes a few more scenarios to do it.
Please do talk to the business about this too and use the language that they use when describing what they do, rather than A and B notifications and responses like I have here.
Related
I need some best practice guidelines for a backend service in a scenario like this one:
UI sends multiple images for uploading to the backend service
Backend service receives all of the images and processes upload to storage one by one
There can be failure in 1 or multiple image upload
My question is how do I send the response towards UI if my backend service is unable to upload 1 or more file(s).
One way can be to send failed and successful image link together in a JSON response body. So the UI knows about the failure and handles it in its own way.
Another way can be to send only the successfully uploaded images' link which is the best case scenario.
Any suggestions will be welcomed with some reference links.
Use an Orchestrator - something specific that can coordinate multiple actions and provide a meaningful result back to the caller.
This might be as simple as a component sitting in the UI that orchestrates calls to the backend. The UI component and the backend service might be designed as parts of a cohesive solution, or the UI component might simply act as a type of client/proxy/facade to some random backend service.
UI calls the orchestrator with references to all the images it needs uploading.
The orchestrator works through the items, uploading each as you prefer (sequentially or in parallel, etc). For each file, handle errors however you prefer - e.g. try once and die gracefully on failure; put errors into a queue or some other mechanism for retry (how many times is up to you); etc.
Based on rules internal to the orchestrator, return status to the caller.
For potentially long-running processes (like file uploads) make sure the call to the orchestrator is asynchronous.
Rather than only returning "complete" result at the end, the orchestrator might provide a simple status back, allowing callers to get some idea of where processing is at. For example, you might have a call-back (from the orchestrator to it's caller) that simply emits very simple statuses like: processing, failed and complete. A more complex solution would be for the orchestrator to return more specific info like %complete and detailed error info.
Have a look at how the big cloud providers do complex file uploads by reading their documentation and studying their API's.
I need some best practice guidelines for a backend service
In no particular order:
Keep it as simple as possible - generally, the fewer moving parts the better. E.g. pay attention to the Single Responsibility Principle (SRP).
Clean up after yourself. If the upload service generates any data - make sure you have a clean-up process so you don't end up with mountains of un-needed data lying around, especially stuff like image files. If you design an upload solution that maintains state (which is independent of what happens to the images once they are uploaded) then you'll be storing data which probably won't be needed once the images are all processed.
Think about support - not just developer debugging but also operational support. Getting your solution into production is not the end result, it's just the beginning.
If designing this solution across teams (e.g. frontend and backend teams) make sure both teams are involved in the design. If the backend team can't provide a solution that works for the frontend team then it's not going to end well.
Think about the likely error scenarios and how can you handle them.
This isn't really just a question of best practice, as there are multiple ways you could implement it, more than one of which could be valid. This is actually an architecture and design question, with more than one valid answer, hence I don't think it fits as a Stack Overflow question and you will not get references to any one correct approach.
That said, by way of an answer I will outline what I think you need. At a very high level, and not necessarily in this order but taking these factors into account, I would:
Design the UI process flow. For example, you may decide that the user process will have several stages:
User selects first image for upload;
User selects each subsequent image for upload;
User presses some kind of "Go" button after selecting all images;
System now uploads the batch, and user receives a response confirming success or otherwise;
User has option to click through to detailed success/error details.
Design the required success/error reports
Design the data needed to support the overall functionality
Provide one or more APIs giving the upload function and the report function(s) the CRUD access they need to this data
If you hit any specific technical issues at any stage, then please post a new questions accordingly as you go.
As to the point you mentioned, how to send the UI response, there is more than one valid way but I would return a basic success/falure response initially, containing only minimal details such as number of successes, and return more details in further messages in response to user actions (such as clicking through to detailed success/error details), at which point I would retrieve the requested error details from the database.
As I said at the start of my answer, I don't think your question can be answered just in terms of best practices, as it's a whole architecture and design question, but I hope my answer helps you along this path.
I am currently developing a Microservice that is interacting with other microservices.
The problem now is that those interactions are really time-consuming. I already implemented concurrent calls via Uni and uses caching where useful. Now I still have some calls that still need some seconds in order to respond and now I thought of another thing, which I could do, in order to improve the performance:
Is it possible to send a response before the sucessfull persistence of data? I send requests to the other microservices where they have to persist the results of my methods. Can I already send the user the result in a first response and make a second response if the persistence process was sucessfull?
With that, the front-end could already begin working even though my API is not 100% finished.
I saw that there is a possible status-code 207 but it's rather used with streams where someone wants to split large files. Is there another possibility? Thanks in advance.
"Is it possible to send a response before the sucessfull persistence of data? Can I already send the user the result in a first response and make a second response if the persistence process was sucessfull? With that, the front-end could already begin working even though my API is not 100% finished."
You can and should, but it is a philosophy change in your API and possibly you have to consider some edge cases and techniques to deal with them.
In case of a long running API call, you can issue an "ack" response, a traditional 200 one, only the answer would just mean the operation is asynchronous and will complete in the future, something like { id:49584958, apicall:"create", status:"queued", result:true }
Then you can
poll your API with the returned ID to see if the operation that is still ongoing, has succeeded or failed.
have a SSE channel (realtime server side events) where your server can issue status messages as pending operations finish
maybe using persistent connections and keepalives, or flushing the response in the middle, you can achieve what you point out, ie. like a segmented response. I am not familiar with that approach as I normally go for the suggesions above.
But in any case, edge cases apply exactly the same: For example, what happens if then through your API a user issues calls dependent on the success of an ongoing or not even started previous command? like for example, get information about something still being persisted?
You will have to deal with these situations with mechanisms like:
Reject related operations until pending call is resolved "server side": Api could return ie. a BUSY error informing that operations are still ongoing when you want to, for example, delete something that still is being created.
Queue all operations so the server executes all them sequentially.
Allow some simulatenous operations if you find they will not collide (ie. create 2 unrelated items)
Does Load Runner support JavaScript execution once response is received, unlike Jmeter?
Because in JMeter when we received the response Page if it contains JavaScript or AJAX call then it is not process by JMeter? So is it supported by Load Runner or not?
Yes, TruClient Virtual User type, vesions 11.x and later.
Unless your code is truly asynchronous, where seperate threads are kicking off Javascript and the server requests are arriving substantially different in sequence every time, you really don't need JavaScript processing. Most of the AJAX clients out there are less 'A' and more 'S'ynchronous in their behavior when you look at the sequence of calls for a given business process across multiple recording sessions. Of the remainder that are truely 'A'synchronous in behavior, a substantial majority of the 'A' calls are to third party components that would not be included in your performance test anyway (Can you imagine trying to coordinate your performance test with people at Google because your app includes Google Maps!)
So, back your core core question. Yes, LoadRunner does include a Virtual User type which supports JavaScript processing, the TruClient Virtual User. You could also use a GUI Virtual User or a Citrix|RDP Virtual User if you wanted to run full browsers. To your larger question, do you really need a virtual user which processes JavaScript? Look carefully at your request sequences across multiple recording sessions to understand whethere your business process is truly asynchronous in nature (with your servers and your code) or is synchronous in behavior with your application.
I've got a JMS messaging system implemented with two queues. One is used as a standard queue second is an error queue.
This system was implemented to handle database concurrency in my application. Basically, there are users and users have assets. One user can interact with another user and as a result of this interaction their assets can change. One user can interact with single user at once, so they cannot start another interaction before the first one finishes. However, one user can be in interaction with other users multiple times [as long as they started the interaction].
What I did was: crated an "interaction registry" in redis, where I store the ID of users who begin an interaction. During interaction I gather all changes that should be made to the second user's assets, and after interaction is finished I send those changes to the queue [user who has started the interaction is saved within the original transaction]. After the interaction is finished I clear the ID from registry in redis.
Listener of my queue will receive a message with information about changes to the user that need to be done. Listener will get all objects which require a change from the database and update it. Listener will check before each update if there is an interaction started by the user being updated. If there is - listener will rollback the transaction and put the message back on the queue. However, if there's something else wrong, message will be put on to the error queue and will be retried several times before it is logged and marked as failed. Phew.
Now I'm at the point where I need to create a proper integration test, so that I make sure no future changes will screw this up.
Positive testing is easy, unfortunately I have to test scenarios, where during updates there's an OptimisticLockFailureException, my own UserInteractingException & some other exceptions [catch (Exception e) that is].
I can simulate my UserInteractingException by creating a payload with hundreds of objects to be updated by the listener and changing one of it in the test. Same thing with OptimisticLockFailureException. But I have no idea how to simulate something else [I can't even think of what could it be].
Also, this testing scenario based on a fluke [well, chance that presented scenario will not trigger an error is very low] is not something I like. I would like to have something more concrete.
Is there any other, good, way to test this scenarios?
Thanks
I did as I described in the original question and it seems to work fine.
Any delays I can test with camel.
Disclaimer: This is a follow-on question from my other question about NServiceBus which was answered very thoroughly.
My current question is this: If a website is built to be 'dumb' like the article referred to, above, suggests then how does the following scenario work?
A user registers on a website by filling out a form with relevant details. When the user clicks the 'submit' button on the form the web application takes the form data and creates a message which it sends to the application tier using NServiceBus and Bus.Send(). The application tier goes about the business of creating the new user and publishing the event that the user has been created (Bus.Publish()) so that other processes can do their thing (email the new user, add the user to a search index, etc, etc).
Now, since the web application in this scenario relies entirely on the application tier for the creation of the new user instance, how does it get to know about the user's id? If I didn't use NServiceBus in this scenario but, rather, let the website issue an in-process call to a DAL I'd use NHibernate's GuidComb() strategy to create the identifier for the new user before persisting the new row in the database. If the message handler application which receives the command to create a new user (in the current scenario) uses the same strategy, how is the userId communicated back to the web application?
Do I have to apply a different strategy for managing identifiers in a scenario such as this?
You're free to come up with an ID to use as a correlation identifier by putting it in your message in the web application, allowing it to be carried around whatevery processes are initiated by the message.
That way, you can correlate the request with other events around your system, if only they remember to supply the correlation ID.
But it sounds like you want your user ID to be fed back to you in the same web request - that cannot easily be done with an asynchronous backend, which is what messaging gives you.
Wouldn't it be acceptable to send an email to the user when the user has been created, containing a (secret) link to some kind of gateway, that resumes the user's session?
Wouldn't the UI be able to listen to the bus for the "user created" event? And then you could correlate either by having the event include some kind of event ID linking back to the "user creation requested" event or against some other well known data in the event (like the user name). Though you probably also have to listen to multiple events, such as "user creation failure" event.
This is not unlike normal AJAX processing in a web browser. Technically, you don't block on the out of band call back to the web server. You invoke the call and you asynchronously wait for a callback.