Summary

Ideology

  • breakdown a large test plan into small, idempotent testcases

  • avoid writing one-use test scripts. Focus on writing reusable testcases, and contribute your agnostic testcase to the overall pool of available tests.

  • divide each testcase into logical test sections, with each section further broken down into individual test steps. The goal is to create test flows that are compartmentalized and clear.

  • do not hard-code values/configuration directly within your testcases. Use input arguments and data files for that.

  • call standard API libraries (eg, pyATS/Genie libs and parsers). If an API you are looking for is missing, contribute to the common ecosystem and benefit everyone. Avoid, at all-cost, the writing of local libraries and APIs specific to your script.

  • where possible, perform actions in parallel

  • catch failures where you can. If something is failing, fail-fast.

Am I Done?

The following checklist will help you to review & revisit whether your work is truly finished:

  • Did you add documentation, docstrings, and README files? Make sure your script runtime environment/testbed requirement is well documented

  • Are healthchecks enabled?

  • Are you leveraging script max runtime/failure features?

  • Are your testcases dynamic, data-driven, and reusable? Should any of them be committed into the pyATS/Genie trigger/verification library?

  • Does your script leverage pyATS/Genie parsers and libraries? Does it contain local libraries, that could be committed to the common set and benefiting all users?

  • Did you user a linter (Flake8, PyLint etc) to lint your code?