In this exercise we explore the non-functional side of testing.
Non functional testing provides valuable insights into code quality and application performance. Often overlooked but usually one of the most essential types of testing, non functional testing types can include, but are not limited to
- Performance Testing
- Security testing
- Static Code analysis
- Vulnerability scanning
There are many tools out there for supporting these testing types but often they are left to the end of a delivery. Many traditional projects will leave Performance testing or security sign off to a few weeks before Go Live. This raises the question of what do we do if things do not pass these tests? Do we hold off the Go Live or accept the risk. In most cases we can learn earlier if things will be show stoppers and more importantly we can automate them.
For example; imagine a developer called Sam
has checked in some poor performing function into an API that spikes it's response time. Let's call this Sam Code
. This Sam Code
may not be caught by our Unit Tests but could have very big impact on application usability. Before building code on top this and it becoming more of an issue at the end of a project; we could code and capture metrics around API response time and track these over time and hopefully spot regressions earlier.
Another one of the age old questions is "How do we know we're testing enough?". Well the simple answer is you can never do enough testing! But how do we know we are testing the right things? Code coverage metrics can be run on our application while running the tests. They can identify what files are tested and a line by line of how many times a test executes against a block of code. Reporting these metrics in our pipeline gives a greater handle on the quality of our testing.
Static code analyis can provide great insights into the quality of the code we've written. By analysing code without executing it bugs and common gotchas can be identified. Code complexity can be assessed using tooling such as SonarQube. Linting of code is a useful thing for non compiled languages such as JavaScript to execute in a build.
Integrating these tools into the developer workflow can greatly improve quality and readability of code. Putting them in the pipeline ensures they are executed - removing the "It works on my machine" view some may take.
As a learner you will be able to
- Create additional Jenkins stages to scan for security vulnerabilities in the Apps
- Assess test quality by producing coverage reports as part of a build
- Improve code readability with linting
- Do some light performance testing to monitor throughput of APIs
Below is a collection of the new frameworks and tools that will be used in this lab
eslint - ESLint is an open source JavaScript linting utility originally created by Nicholas C. Zakas in June 2013. Code linting is a type of static analysis that is frequently used to find problematic patterns or code that doesn’t adhere to certain style guidelines. There are code linters for most programming languages, and compilers sometimes incorporate linting into the compilation process.
stryker - Mutation testing! What is it? Bugs, or mutants, are automatically inserted into your production code. Your tests are run for each mutant. If your tests fail then the mutant is killed. If your tests passed, the mutant survived. The higher the percentage of mutants killed, the more effective your tests are. It's really that simple.
This exercise begins cluster containing blah blah
This lesson will use the Exercise 4's Zap Slave and Arachni scanner to improve the pipeline. Linting will be included in the build and code coverage too.
Add a parallel stage after the e2e tests on the front end to run OWASP Zap and Arachni against the deployed apps.
Add Code Coverage reporing to the build for gaining greater insight into test improvements.
Add npm run lint
to the Frontend and report the result using the Checkstyle Plugin in Jenkins.
Create a new Jenkins job to run some light performance testing against the API layer using the perf tests tasks.
This is a well structured guide with references to exact filenames and indications as to what should be done.
In this exercise the first of our non-functional testing is explored in the form of some security scanning. We will add the scans to our Jenkinsfile and have them run as new stages
Open the todolist-fe
application's Jenkinsfile
in your favourite editor. The file is stored in the root of the project.
The file is layed out with a collection of stages that correspond to each part of our build as seen below. We will create a new stage to execute in parallel.
Create a new Parallel Stage called security scanning
underneath the stage("e2e test") { }
section as shown below. The contents of the e2e test
have been removed for simplicity.
```groovy
stage("e2e test") {
// ... stuff in here ....
}
stage("security scanning") {
parallel {
stage('OWASP Scan') {
}
stage('Arachni Scan') {
}
}
}
2. Let's start filling out the configuration for the OWASP Zap scan first. We will set the label to our slave created in previous exercise and a `when` condition of the master or develop branch.
stage('OWASP Scan') {
agent {
node {
label "jenkins-slave-zap"
}
}
when {
expression { GIT_BRANCH ==~ /(.*master|.*develop)/ }
}
}
```
Add a step
with a sh
command to run the tool by passing in the URL of the app we're going to test.groovy stage('OWASP Scan') { agent { node { label "jenkins-slave-zap" } } when { expression { GIT_BRANCH ==~ /(.*master|.*develop)/ } } steps { sh ''' /zap/zap-baseline.py -r index.html -t ${E2E_TEST_ROUTE} || return_code=$? echo "exit value was - " $return_code ''' } }
Finally add the reporting for Jenkins in post
hook of our Declarative Pipeline. This is to report the findings of the scan in Jenkins as a HTML report.groovy stage('OWASP Scan') { agent { node { label "jenkins-slave-zap" } } when { expression { GIT_BRANCH ==~ /(.*master|.*develop)/ } } steps { sh ''' /zap/zap-baseline.py -r index.html -t http://${E2E_TEST_ROUTE} || return_code=$? echo "exit value was - " $return_code ''' } post { always { // publish html publishHTML target: [ allowMissing: false, alwaysLinkToLastBuild: false, keepAll: true, reportDir: '/zap/wrk', reportFiles: 'index.html', reportName: 'Zap Branniscan' ] } } }
Let's add our Arachni Scan to the second part of the parallel block. The main difference between these sections is Jenkins will report an XML report too for failing the build accordingly. Below is the snippet for the Arachni scanning.groovy stage('Arachni Scan') { agent { node { label "jenkins-slave-arachni" } } when { expression { GIT_BRANCH ==~ /(.*master|.*develop)/ } } steps { sh ''' /arachni/bin/arachni http://${E2E_TEST_ROUTE} --report-save-path=arachni-report.afr /arachni/bin/arachni_reporter arachni-report.afr --reporter=xunit:outfile=report.xml --reporter=html:outfile=web-report.zip unzip web-report.zip -d arachni-web-report ''' } post { always { junit 'report.xml' publishHTML target: [ allowMissing: false, alwaysLinkToLastBuild: false, keepAll: true, reportDir: 'arachni-web-report', reportFiles: 'index.html', reportName: 'Arachni Web Crawl' ] } } }
With this config in place run a build on Jenkins. To do this; commit your code (from your terminal):bash $ git add . $ git commit -m "ADD - security scanning tools to pipeline" $ git push
Check out the Blue Ocean Jenkins view for how the parallel stage is viewed!
Once the Jobs have completed; navigate to the Jobs status and see the scores. You can find the graphs and test reports on overview of the Job. Explore the results!
NOTE - your build may have failed because of the a security failure but the reports should still be generated, it is OK to proceed with the next exercise!
Let's continue to enhance our pipeline with some non-functional testing. Static code analysis and testing coverage reports can provide a useful indicator on code quality and testing distribution
Coverage reports are already being generated as part of the tests. We can have Jenkins produce a HTML report showing in detail where our testing is lacking. Open the todolist-fe
in your favourite editor.
Open the Jenkinsfile
in the root of the project; move to the stage("node-build"){ ... }
section. In the post
section add a block for producing a HTML
report as part of our builds. This is all that is needed for Jenkins to repor the coverage stats.groovy // Post can be used both on individual stages and for the entire build. post { always { archive "**" junit 'test-report.xml' // publish html publishHTML target: [ allowMissing: false, alwaysLinkToLastBuild: false, keepAll: true, reportDir: 'reports/coverage', reportFiles: 'index.html', reportName: 'Code Coverage' ] }
To get the linting working; we will add a new step to our stage("node-build"){ }
section to lint the Javascript code. Continuing in the Jenkinsfile
, After the npm install
; add a command to run the linting.groovy echo '### Install deps ###' sh 'npm install' echo '### Running linting ###' sh 'npm run lint'
Save the Jenkinsfile
and commit it to trigger a build with some more enhancements.bash $ git add . $ git commit -m "ADD - linting and coverage to the pipeline" $ git push
When the build has completed; fix the linting errors if there are any and commit your changes. Look in Jenkins log for what the issue might be....
To view the coverage graph; go to the job's build page and open the Code Coverage
report from the nav bar on the side.
NOTE - Sometimes this won't display on the yourjenkins.com/job/todolist-fe/job/branch/
sidebar, click on an individual build in the build history and it should appear on the side navbar.
Open the report to drill down into detail of where testing coverage could be improved!
NOTE - a good practice for teams is to try and increase the code coverage metrics over the life of a project. Teams will often start low and use practices such as retrospective to increase the quality at specific times.
(Optional Step) - Install the Checkstyle plugin; and add checkstyle pattern: 'eslint-report.xml'
below the publishHTML
block to add reporting to Jenkins!
In this exercise, we will execute the light performance tasks in our API to collect data about throughtput time in hopes if the API ever has some
Sam
quality code checked in, we will spot it
An arbitrary value for the API's to respond in has been chosen. It is set in the todolist-api/tasks/perf-test.js
file. In this exercise we will get Jenkins to execute the tests and fail based on the score set there!
Create a new Item on Jenkins, nightly-perf-test
and make it a freestyle job.
Set the label
on Restrict where this project can be run
to jenkins-slave-npm
one used by the build jobs previously.
In the SCM section; set the project to use the todolist-api
git project. Set the credentials accordingly.
Set the build to execute each night; for example 0300 in the morning. Hit Build periodically
on the Build Triggers section and set it to H 3 * * *
.
Set the Color ANSI Console Output
on the Build Environment section.
Click add build step
and select execute shell
and add the following to it, replacing <YOUR_NAME>
and somedomain
as expected. We will just test the create
and show
API for the moment. We are grabbing the response code of the perf-test to keep Jenkins running both shells steps and then exiting with whichever fails:bash export E2E_TEST_ROUTE=todolist-api-<YOUR_NAME>-dev.apps.somedomain.com npm install set +e npm run perf-test:create rc1=$? npm run perf-test:show rc2=$? set -e exit $(($rc1 | $rc2))
On the Post Build actions section we will plot the data from the perf tests in Jenkins. Add a Post-build Action > Plot Build Data
.
On the new dialog, name the Plot group eg benchmark-tests
and add create-api
as the Plot title. Set the Number of Builds to Include
to a large number like 100
. Set the Data Series file to be reports/server/perf/create-perf-score.csv
and mark the Load data from CSV fiel
checkbox. Apply those changes
Hit Add Plot
to add another. Set Plot group to benchmark-tests
again but this time setting the Plot title to show-api
. Set the Data Series file to be reports/server/perf/show-perf-score.csv
and mark the Load data from CSV
radio button. Save those changes and run the job (Job could take a while to execute!).
Run it a few times to start to generate the data points on the plot. The bench-tests
plot is available on the job's homepage
Ideas for go-getters. Advanced topic for doers to get on with if they finish early. These will usually not have a solution and are provided for additional scope.
todolist-api
with the security scanning tools as you've done for the todolist-api
todolist-api
with the coverage reporting as you've done for todolist-api
Stryker
to create mutants and do additional non functional testing of the AppList of links or other reading that might be of use / reference for the exercise