The Future of Vue Test Utils

By Jessica Sachs

Find me on...

VueConf Amsterdam

Agenda

• What is Vue Test Utils?
• New Maintainers
• Guiding Principles for Vue Test Utils
• Vue 3 and the v1 Release
• shallowMount versus mount

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What is Vue Test Utils?

What is Vue Test Utils?

🎯 A library of helper functions to help users test their components

What is Vue Test Utils?

What can Vue Test Utils do?

What is Vue Test Utils?

What is the wrapper?

An abstraction.

What is Vue Test Utils?

🎯 If you don't have what you need on the wrapper, just grab the Vue instance on wrapper.vm

The Vue Testing Library

Who's building on top of Vue Test Utils?

New Maintainers!

New Maintainers

On December 10th we added

4 new maintainers to the Vue Test Utils project

In 6 weeks, including holidays...

• Closed 66 Issues ✅
• Closed 47 Pull Requests ✅
• Currently architecting v1 and Vue 3 plans

New Maintainers

Vue 3 and the
v1 Release

Our plans for the future

v1 will be rolled out with Vue 3 support

• Will support Vue 3, Vue 2, Composition API users
• Will provide tools and guides for people to incrementally upgrade their test suite
  • Vue 2 and Composition API Plugin users

Vue 3 and the
v1 Release

Typescript Migration

• VTU is currently written in Flow
• In sync with the rest of the Vue Ecosystem
• Better Developer Experience (IDE support)

Vue 3 and the
v1 Release

Using Community Projects to Integration Test

• Using the Vuetify and Gitlab test suites
• Integration suites using popular component libraries (ElementUI, BootstrapVue)

Vue 3 and the
v1 Release

Better Documentation

• Lacks the clarity that the Vue docs are known for
• Needs improved real-world examples: i18n, native events, custom events
• Using Vue Test Utils has areas of friction
  • Testing with component libraries
  • Choosing mount versus shallowMount
• A "Best Practices" section for testing Vue components

Vue 3 and the
v1 Release

Guiding Principles

Guiding Principles

• Simple, utility library
• A lean core, extensible platform
• Production-like
• Easy-to-follow documentation

Guiding Principles

Simple, utility library

• It provides a way to mount and test Vue Components
• Can find/findAll components with a given name
• Can trigger events
• Can mock and stub components to be rendered
  • shallowMount, or individual stubs

Guiding Principles

A lean core
An extensible platform

• Exploring a plugin architecture

Easy plugin development should allow the community to extend the API with custom matchers.

Guiding Principles

Production-like API

• Identify API methods that require hacking reactivity
  • setMethods, setData, setProps
• Write documentation that underline alternatives to using those methods
• Outline potential pitfalls of these methods in the documentation

Guiding Principles

shallowMount vs Mount

• Possible API changes in the far future
  • mount({ shallow: true })
• Do a better job teaching people about the power and pitfalls of shallowMount versus Mount

Guiding Principles

A slippery slope: Skiing down shallowMountain

Getting involved

Vue Land Discord #vue-testing

Github RFCs

Getting Help

Vue Land Discord #vue-testing

Github Issues