Contract-Based Testing 2: End‑to‑End Headaches
By: Sander Van Beek
Tags: Paradigm, End To End Testing, Testing, Contract Testing

Photo by Tim Gouw from Pexels

In part 1, I’ve talked about the basics of contract-based testing. I haven’t talked about the specifics of contract-based testing yet, I will do so in part 3.

Before I dive deep into the details of contract-based testing I want to take a small step back to talk about end-to-end testing. Both contract-based tests and end-to-end tests are ways to test full applications. These approaches have a lot of overlap. In this article, I want to talk about some issues of end-to-end tests and why contract-based tests are a better fit for most situations.

End-to-end testing

When testing on an end-to-end environment we deploy all applications required for a test in the same environment. We try to make this environment as similar to production as possible.

Image by Vilas Pultoo

In this example, we have two applications running on the end-to-end environment. A provider application called Amazing and a consumer application named Belle. Amazing and Belle can talk to each other via an API. We feed the applications with everything they need to run. Think of environment-specific dependencies like data, files, certificates, etc. With all of this setup, we can start testing.

Image by Vilas Pultoo

When we execute a test, we’ll do so from a separate environment, like a laptop or a pipeline. Note that all the complex stuff happens in the end-to-end environment.

The good stuff

Testing like this is very effective. Because of the production-likeness, we can test anything and everything that can happen in production. It’s no wonder that this way of testing is popular; at a passing glance, it’s clear to everybody why end-to-end tests are useful.

Test complex interactions

Functional tests

Technical tests

Manual tests

Let the business preview features

Replay production issues

Lots of coverage per test

Headache fuel

Despite the awesome possibilities, I get headaches from testing on an end-to-end environment.

Tests are brittle.

This is especially the case when teams release often. Many applications on end-to-end environments will run multiple versions every day, with no notice upfront. Having this many versions, some of which untested, hurts the stability of the environment. Another effect of this is that your test results can’t tell you if things will work with the production versions of the applications you depend on.

This is especially the case when teams release often. Many applications on end-to-end environments will run multiple versions every day, with no notice upfront. Having this many versions, some of which untested, hurts the stability of the environment. Another effect of this is that your test results can’t tell you if things will work with the production versions of the applications you depend on. Tests take a long time to make.

When making tests you often depend on other teams to do things, like adding data to their database. This is slow because those teams have different priorities. This gets more painful when you need data to be in sync across multiple applications for your tests to pass.

When making tests you often depend on other teams to do things, like adding data to their database. This is slow because those teams have different priorities. This gets more painful when you need data to be in sync across multiple applications for your tests to pass. Maintenance is very time-consuming.

End-to-end environments tend to have a lot of tests and all of them need maintenance at some point. It’s not an issue when we have full control over all parts of the test, but some parts of our tests live in other people’s applications and vice versa. This results in situations where no one knows what’s part of which test and if we can remove it. This causes the environment to be slowly polluted with parts of decommissioned tests.

What’s interesting about the issues listed above is that they are all born from the same root cause; tight coupling. We intertwine our applications and teams to such a degree that it becomes impossible to manage things like data and versions effectively. The teams involved constantly depend on each other. For me, the result is a headache at the end of the day.

Slow feedback

The final headache inducer is the slow feedback end-to-end tests provide. With a continuous integration pipeline, we can get test results of low-level tests in a few minutes. But end-to-end tests tend to be slow processes. When we add these very high-level tests to the pipeline our feedback time is increased dramatically, often 10-fold. And that’s assuming a best-case scenario where …

You’re executing all tests.

Skipping tests can result in you missing an issue. Don’t compromise the quality of your test run by cutting corners.

Skipping tests can result in you missing an issue. Don’t compromise the quality of your test run by cutting corners. You’ve automated all your end-to-end tests.

Including manual tests in a continuous integration pipeline is a bad idea. It will inflate your feedback time to when-the-tester-has-time-to-look-at-it which will drive developers crazy.

Including manual tests in a continuous integration pipeline is a bad idea. It will inflate your feedback time to when-the-tester-has-time-to-look-at-it which will drive developers crazy. The end-to-end environment has been stable for the duration of the test run.

For example, an application you’re depending on might get a new release while you’re running your tests. This release causes some downtime which will make your tests fail. You analyze the error and will have to restart the pipeline. Again. This further increases your feedback time.

This slow feedback will lead to a longer time-to-market for all changes to your application, including bugfixes. This has a direct impact on the experience of the end-user and the ferocity of my headache.

Headaches begone

Contract-based testing can mitigate a lot of our headaches, though it’s not the almighty hero that will save us in every situation. Some think all end-to-end tests can be replaced with contract-tests. That may be the case for some applications, but it should never be the goal. End-to-end testing is not a bad way of testing, it’s just a very time-consuming one you should use sparsely. Remember, contract-based testing is placed below end-to-end testing on the test pyramid. It does not replace it.

After you finish reading about the details of contract-based testing, ask yourself how many of your end-to-end tests you can replace with contract tests. I guestimate that in my case we can replace somewhere between 70% and 100% of all end-to-end tests with contract-tests.

Moving away from end-to-end

I’ve talked quite a bit about contract-based testing so far. Let’s explore if we really need it to get rid of our end-to-end headaches.

Image by Vilas Pultoo

When we transition away from our end-to-end environment we get the situation above. We run all applications in their own isolated environment. Our applications still expect other applications to be there. We create stubs to fake the behaviour of our dependencies.

Image by Vilas Pultoo

It will work great in the beginning but after a few releases production will start failing left and right. We can’t rely on our tests to catch integration regression as nothing links our applications anymore. If an API provider introduces a breaking change to an API we depend on, our tests cannot catch the issue. This happens because during testing there is no coupling between our applications, and production will suffer because of it.

Image by Vilas Pultoo

Take, for example, a situation where the provider releases Amazing@1.5.0 while our stubs still work as if Amazing is at version 1.4.0. This is called stub drift; the stubs have silently drifted from the reality of production. Stub drift will lead to false positives in our tests.

The good stuff

The first time you shift from end-to-end tests to this way of testing, you feel great. You’re suddenly able to create tests much faster because you have full control over all parts of the test. Executing these tests is faster too because everything runs locally. We’re suddenly talking milliseconds instead of seconds. It is awesome! And the best part: No more headaches.

Source of tears

Though, as mentioned before, this euphoria will not last long.

The first thing you’ll notice is that you can’t reproduce all the existing tests this way. Some tests are only useful when data flows through multiple applications. Since you’re running your tests in isolation now, these tests are impossible. Some types of tests can’t be done in isolation by definition. You will need to keep some end-to-end tests, but at least there are a lot fewer.

Then, after a while, the production issues start coming in. Another application released a new version, and that broke a part of the API you’re using. It’s an honest mistake, a typo by a developer. The API providers tests didn’t catch it and neither did yours. This would have been caught with end-to-end tests, but those no longer exist for this particular interface.

You and your team work hard to push a fix and the only thing the product owner can do is get you all some tea and order pizza for dinner. You are unhappy, your team is unhappy, the end-users are unhappy, and then there is the pizza delivery guy. He’s just standing there — enjoying your misery. He smirks in satisfaction watching you add a tear to your pizza as an extra topping.

Dry your tears

You can’t catch integration regression if you test with no coupling between the API provider and the consuming application. This leads to false positives in your tests and thus to production issues. There are more ways in which testing in full isolation like this works against you. But, to keep it short: When a test pattern has such an enormous potential for false positives, it’s not a suitable pattern.

So, let’s find a way to test our application that will not give us headaches or make us cry. Looking back at what we’ve seen so far tells us that when we’re tightly coupled (end-to-end) we get a headache. And when not coupled at all (full isolation) we’ll eat tear-soaked pizza. As with many things in life, the solution lies somewhere in the middle. Contract-based testing is such a solution.

Contract-based testing

When contract-based testing we couple each application with a single file: A contract. This way our applications are coupled, but not nearly as tight as we are with end-to-end tests.

Image by Vilas Pultoo

If you remember from part 1; the contract is the shared understanding of the interface between the provider and consumer. Both sides can use this shared understanding in their implementation and tests. All while making sure that the only coupling between the two sides is via the contract.

Because we have some coupling, we will catch interface regression in our contract tests. We also keep the significant advantages of testing in isolation. In particular, the independence of other teams leads to much faster test creation and a general loss of headaches among team members.

Conclusion

We’ve looked at multiple ways of testing full applications. The tightly coupled nature of end-to-end testing makes it powerful, but also time-consuming. When we leave our end-to-end environment we find that we’re suddenly fully isolated with no coupling at all. This has many issues, the biggest of which lead to false positives in your tests.

Contract-based testing is a solution that results in some coupling, but not as tight as with end-to-end tests. This allows us to steer clear of many of the downsides of end-to-end testing while gaining many of the upsides that come with testing in isolation.

In part 3, I’ll talk about the details of how contract-based testing works, its approaches, strengths, and weaknesses. And no more talk about headaches, tears, or pizza. I promise.