oliverdavies.uk/content/node.526f1b74-c255-4dd3-ba7a-5d529545d01d.yml

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  - value: '2025-05-11T08:59:58+00:00'
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title:
  - value: 'Automated tests reduce debugging time'
created:
  - value: '2025-04-01T00:00:00+00:00'
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  - value: '2025-05-11T08:59:58+00:00'
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      <p>In my <a href="/presentations/tdd-test-driven-drupal">talk about automated testing and test-driven development</a>, I speak about a custom module I wrote for a client's Drupal project.</p>

      <p>It was to integrate with a third-party job application system that they would log into and enter information via a form (similar to Drupal's node forms) that they wanted to appear on the Drupal website.</p>

      <p>Once submitted, the system would send a POST request to an endpoint provided by the custom module. The module would process it and create the job node with the appropriate field values.</p>

      <p>I wrote automated tests and did test-driven development.</p>

      <p>Everything worked great for a few weeks or months.</p>

      <p>Later, we had a message from the client saying the integration was broken and we needed to fix it.</p>

      <p>I don't think I'd worked on this module for a while, but I was concerned that a Drupal core update or another change could have caused a regression.</p>

      <p>The first thing I did was run the tests I'd written and verify they still passed, which they did.</p>

      <p>This confirmed that as long as the data was being sent in the expected format, the node would be created and the integration would work.</p>

      <p>Due to an upstream issue, the data was no longer in the expected format, which meant the node could not be created.</p>

      <p>Once it was fixed, everything started working again.</p>

      <p>My debugging time was practically zero as I was able to rely on my tests and that they were still passing.</p>

      <p>I could confidently tell the client that the issue wasn't with our code and must've been an third-party issue.</p>

      <p>Writing tests takes some time, but having tests saves time.</p>

              
    format: full_html
    processed: |
      <p>In my <a href="/presentations/tdd-test-driven-drupal">talk about automated testing and test-driven development</a>, I speak about a custom module I wrote for a client's Drupal project.</p>

      <p>It was to integrate with a third-party job application system that they would log into and enter information via a form (similar to Drupal's node forms) that they wanted to appear on the Drupal website.</p>

      <p>Once submitted, the system would send a POST request to an endpoint provided by the custom module. The module would process it and create the job node with the appropriate field values.</p>

      <p>I wrote automated tests and did test-driven development.</p>

      <p>Everything worked great for a few weeks or months.</p>

      <p>Later, we had a message from the client saying the integration was broken and we needed to fix it.</p>

      <p>I don't think I'd worked on this module for a while, but I was concerned that a Drupal core update or another change could have caused a regression.</p>

      <p>The first thing I did was run the tests I'd written and verify they still passed, which they did.</p>

      <p>This confirmed that as long as the data was being sent in the expected format, the node would be created and the integration would work.</p>

      <p>Due to an upstream issue, the data was no longer in the expected format, which meant the node could not be created.</p>

      <p>Once it was fixed, everything started working again.</p>

      <p>My debugging time was practically zero as I was able to rely on my tests and that they were still passing.</p>

      <p>I could confidently tell the client that the issue wasn't with our code and must've been an third-party issue.</p>

      <p>Writing tests takes some time, but having tests saves time.</p>

              
    summary: null
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