Property based testing

• See pragmatic programmer book

• A form of testing that is similar to table tests, but more flexible with random values which can be set within bounds, that tests the code.

• Focused on testing the contracts and invariants

  • what must be true, what must not be changed

  • removing edge cases and highlighting functions that leave data in an inconsistent state

Issues

• Hard to pinpoint where the problem occured, what test case broke the test.

• Problems with setup, if unit testing, the controlling dependencies might be an issue.

  • Will need to be very tight in terms of the test cases for each set of behaviour

• USe of random values. Big issue, as a test may fail once, the pass again, lead to flakiness

  • Instead, find the test case, and values that caused the failure, and write a specific test for this, thus acting as a regression