Testing

Unit Tests

The Interactive Experimentation Engine (IEE) project includes a comprehensive set of unit tests to ensure the correctness and reliability of the backend functionality. Unit tests focus on testing individual functions or classes in isolation, without depending on external services like MLflow or MongoDB.

Testing Framework

Unit tests are implemented using pytest, a flexible Python testing framework that allows:

  • Test discovery based on file and function naming conventions

  • Marking tests with custom tags (e.g., unit, integration)

  • Capturing and asserting logs and warnings

  • Parametrized tests for multiple inputs

Test Structure

All unit tests are located under:

backend/tests/unit

The typical structure is:

unit/
├── test_files_read_installed_packages.py
├── test_files_create_records.py
├── test_notebook_creation.py
└── ...

Each test module focuses on a specific backend functionality:

Test Module Purpose

test_files_read_installed_packages.py

Verifies functions that read installed or available Python packages (readInstalledPackages, readAvailablePackages)

test_files_create_records.py

Tests file and notebook record creation logic (createFileRecords) and metadata correctness

test_notebook_creation.py

Ensures the notebook creation scripts correctly generate new notebooks, handle templates, and respect permissions

Example Test Case

@pytest.mark.unit
def test_create_file_records_basic(tmp_path, monkeypatch):
    """
    Test basic functionality of createFileRecords. Creates a temporary file and checks
    if the returned record matches expected values.
    """
    monkeypatch.setattr("app.models.files.CONFIG", FakeConfig)

    base = tmp_path / "data-exploration"
    base.mkdir()

    file1 = base / "test.txt"
    file1.write_text("hello")

    result = createFileRecords(str(base))

    assert len(result) == 1
    record = result[0]

    assert record["file_name"] == "test.txt"
    assert record["environment_id"] == "data_exploration"
    assert "notebooks/test.txt" in record["notebook_url"]
    assert record["size"] == str(os.stat(file1).st_size)

Running Unit Tests

To execute the unit tests, navigate to the backend/tests directory and run:

pytest -v -m "unit" --rootdir=backend/tests -c backend/tests/pytest.ini

This will:

  • Discover all tests marked as unit

  • Use the pytest.ini configuration for warnings, output formatting, and test options

  • Print a verbose output for easier debugging

Next Steps