Testing with Snapshots

As of version 11, tap supports saving and then comparing against "snapshot" strings. This is a powerful technique for testing programs that generate output, but it comes with some caveats.

Basics of Output Testing

Consider a test program like this:

module.exports = function (tag, contents) {
  return '<' + tag + '>' + contents + '</' + tag + '>'
}

We might have a test like this:

const t = require('tap')
const tagger = require('./index.js')
t.equal(tagger('tagName', 'content'), '<tagName>content</tagName>')

This is good for a couple of reasons:

1. It's clear reading our test what the expected output is.
2. We're unlikely to create a test without thinking carefully about what exactly it's testing.

However, managing strings like this can become extremely tedious, especially in cases where the output is long, or there are many cases to test. If we make an intentional change to the output, then we need to manually update a large number of large strings, scattered throughout the test suite. The inevitable result is that we either make the tests less comprehensive, or even worse, treat some as "known failures".

Testing Output with Snapshots

We could also write our test file like this:

const t = require('tap')
const tagger = require('./index.js')
t.matchSnapshot(tagger('tagName', 'content'), 'output')

But wait, where is the expected output?

To create the snapshot file, we run this command:

$ tap test.js --snapshot
 PASS  test.js 1 OK 344ms


  🌈 SUMMARY RESULTS 🌈


Suites:   1 passed, 1 of 1 completed
Asserts:  1 passed, of 1
Time:     422ms

By setting TAP_SNAPSHOT in the environment or passing the --snapshot command line flag, we tell tap to write the output to a special file, and treat the assertion as automatically passing.

Snapshots will be generated by default if the npm script being run is named snap or snapshot, so you can use this pattern to test and snapshot most projects:

{
  "name": "my-project",
  "version": "1.2.3",

  "devDependencies": {
    "tap": "15"
  },
  "scripts": {
    "test": "tap",
    "snap": "tap"
  }
}

Then, you can use npm test to run your tests, or npm run snap to update snapshot files.

Snapshot Files

The generated file is designed to be human-readable, but you should not edit it directly.

$ cat tap-snapshots/test.js.test.cjs
/* IMPORTANT
 * This snapshot file is auto-generated, but designed for humans.
 * It should be checked into source control and tracked carefully.
 * Re-generate by setting TAP_SNAPSHOT=1 and running tests.
 * Make sure to inspect the output below.  Do not ignore changes!
 */
'use strict'
exports[`test.js TAP > output 1`] = `
<tagName>content</tagName>

The filename is derived from the name of the test file. The headings of each string output are based on the names of your tests and assertions, and given a numeric index to handle collisions.

Snapshotting non-Strings

If the argument passed to t.matchSnapshot() isn't a string, then it will be converted to a string using tcompare.format. This is typically pretty easy for humans to understand, but of course if you prefer to use JSON.stringify or something else, you can do so easily enough. The t.formatSnapshot can be used to customize this for an entire test.

Caveats

Track Changes

Important: you should check the snapshot file into source control!

When there are changes to it, inspect the diff and make sure that nothing unexpected happened to change your output.

If you don't check this file into source control, then a significant part of your test is not checked in. This prevents people from collaborating on your project.

If you accept changes to it without care, then you can obscure unintended changes. (Though, even if this happens, git bisect can track down the source of the change quite quickly, so it's not the end of the world if there are occasional mistakes.)

Strip Variables from Output with t.cleanSnapshot

If your output includes data that is known to change from one run to the next, then these changes should be stripped before matching against a snapshot.

This includes process IDs, time stamps, and many other system details.

Consider this function:

function msgTime (msg) {
  return msg + ' time=' + Date.now()
}

Since the output will obviously be slightly different every time the function is tested, we need to strip out the time value.

The best way to do this is with a t.cleanSnapshot function. This function takes the formatted snapshot as a string, and returns a string to be saved or compared against. The default cleaner is an identity function that returns its input without any changes.

A test that uses this method:

const t = require('tap')

// This must be assigned *before* running tests
// It is passed down to child tests when they are created
t.cleanSnapshot = s => {
  return s.replace(/ time=[0-9]+$/g, ' time={time}')
}

const output = msgTime('this is a test')
t.matchSnapshot(output, 'add timestamp to message')

When run with --snapshot, it generates this snapshot file:

/* IMPORTANT
 * This snapshot file is auto-generated, but designed for humans.
 * It should be checked into source control and tracked carefully.
 * Re-generate by setting TAP_SNAPSHOT=1 and running tests.
 * Make sure to inspect the output below.  Do not ignore changes!
 */
'use strict'
exports[`msgtime.test.js TAP > add timestamp to message 1`] = `
this is a test time={time}
`

Custom Formatting

Sometimes just modifying the string is not enough, or a special data type should be stringified differently.

By default, tap uses tcompare.format to convert all non-string values into strings for saving and comparing.

To override this and provide your own behavior, set a function to t.formatSnapshot. Like t.cleanSnapshot, child tests will copy their parent test's value at their time of creation.

An example of using t.formatSnapshot:

const t = require('tap')
const yaml = require('tap-yaml')
t.formatSnapshot = object => yaml.stringify(object)

// now all my snapshot files will be in yaml!
t.matchSnapshot({ foo: ['bar', 'baz'] })

This will produce the following snapshot file:

/* IMPORTANT
 * This snapshot file is auto-generated, but designed for humans.
 * It should be checked into source control and tracked carefully.
 * Re-generate by setting TAP_SNAPSHOT=1 and running tests.
 * Make sure to inspect the output below.  Do not ignore changes!
 */
'use strict'
exports[`yaml.test.js TAP > must match snapshot 1`] = `
foo:
  - bar
  - baz

`

Even More Advanced Customization (Warning: footguns ahead!)

By default, the snapshot file that TAP uses is set based on the test filename and any arguments passed to it. This prevents having two test suites clobber one another's snapshots.

If you would like to specify a different filename for your snapshots, you can do so by setting the t.snapshotFile field. If you set this field in a child test, then the parent test will still use its old snapshot file, but snapshots in the child test (and all its children) will go to the new file.

But, be advised, this is advanced usage and exposes you to some hazards!

• When generating snapshots, the file is overwritten, so if two tests use the same snapshot file, they will not be merged. The last one will win. Make sure that every snapshot file you use is unique to the entire test run.
• Snapshot files should always be in a folder called tap-snapshot, and should always end in .test.cjs. This pattern ensures that tap can load them properly, and that they will not be confused with normal test files.

Example of using a separate snapshot file for subtests:

// file 'test/snappy.js'
const t = require('tap')
const { resolve } = require('path')

t.matchSnapshot('this writes to ./tap-snapshots/test/snappy.js.test.cjs')

t.test('foo', async t => {
  // this writes to ./test/tap-snapshots/foo.test.cjs'
  t.snapshotFile = resolve(__dirname, 'tap-snapshots', 'foo.test.cjs')
  t.matchSnapshot('foo')
})

t.test('bar', async t => {
  // this writes to ./test/tap-snapshots/bar.test.cjs'
  t.snapshotFile = resolve(__dirname, 'tap-snapshots', 'bar.test.cjs')
  t.matchSnapshot('bar')
})

t.test('baz', async t => {
  // this one doesn't set it, so it uses the parent's snapshot object,
  // which writes to ./tap-snapshots/test/snappy.js.test.cjs
  t.matchSnapshot('baz')
})