README.md

Introduction

There's typically a fundamental tradeoff when deciding how to build integration/endpoint tests:

1. If the tests simply mock the database interactions, they will have the benefit of always being deterministic, but at the cost of validating those database interactions.
2. If the tests interact with a real database, they will have the benefit of validating those database interactions, but will require significant system setup to connect the app to a running database.

This project—however—implements a middle-ground in its resolvers.test.ts file: The tests validate real database interactions, but require essentially no prior system setup.

To do this, I'm using npm testcontainers to programatically spin up an shut down database containers only for the duration of the npm test script. Using these real database clients means that the application code can be tested without relying on a single mock.

Because of how self-contained these tests are, the only setup required to run npm test is a running Docker daemon.

Installation

1. Run npm install to install the dependencies.
2. Run npm run copy-env:local to create a .env from .env-local if .env doesn't already exist.
3. Start MongoDB on the default port (already set in .env).
   • On Unix, this can be run via sudo brew services start mongodb-community@6.0.
4. Run npm start to start the application.

Development Mode

1. Run npm run dev to start the application in live-updating development mode.

Routes

Route	Method	Response
/graphql	POST	Provides a GraphQL API

Testing

With Docker running, run npm test.