Go Testing Patterns

This page documents patterns that we have found to be generally useful when writing tests in Go. This page is intended for a reader that is already familiar with the Go testing package, and with writing tests in Go. To get started with testing in Go, check out the go.dev tutorial.

The patterns documented on this page are too small to be useful in a library. Often abstracting them into generic library code would make them harder to use. They are intended to be copied, or applied, in any package where they are used.

Know of a common Go testing pattern that you would like to add to this page? Please open an issue to suggest adding it!

Table driven tests

Table driven tests are a common pattern in Go. Table driven tests are a great way of organizing many highly related test cases into a single test function.

The pattern documented here refines table drive tests further by reordering the sections to make table driven tests easier to read from top-to-bottom. The table test is organized into the following sections:

1. A type testCase struct is always first, mostly out of necessity, the type must be defined first. For more complex tests you may want to use a func(t *testing.T, ...) as the type of fields (for example setup func(t *testing.T, req *http.Request)). Using a function gives you lots of flexibility when constructing test cases.
2. A run(t *testing.T, tc testCase) function which will be called for each case. This function contains all of the logic for the test. This run function is the most relevant part of the test function, it tells us which function is being tested, and how the testCase fields will be used. By putting it near the top of the test function it becomes the first thing we see when jumping to the function definition.
3. A list of test cases follows. The list defines the inputs and expected values for each case. The list may be a []testCase or map[string]testCase, where the map version would use the key as the name for the test case instead of a struct field. Always try to choose descriptive and unique names for each case, to make it easier to find the failing case.
4. Finally there is some boilerplate at the bottom of the function to iterate over all of the test cases and call run from t.Run for each.

func TestSplit(t *testing.T) {
    type testCase struct {
        name     string
        input    string
        sep      string
        expected []string
    }

    run := func(t *testing.T, tc testCase) {
        actual := strings.Split(tc.input, tc.sep)
        assert.DeepEqual(t, actual, tc.expected)
    }

    testCases := []testCase{
        {
            name:     "multiple splits",
            input:    "a/b/c",
            sep:      "/",
            expected: []string{"a", "b", "c"},
        },
        {
            name:     "wrong separator",
            input:    "a/b/c",
            sep:      ",",
            expected: []string{"a/b/c"},
        },
        {
            name:     "no separator",
            input:    "abc",
            sep:      "/",
            expected: []string{"abc"},
        },
        {
            name:     "trailing separator",
            input:    "a/b/c/",
            sep:      "/",
            expected: []string{"a", "b", "c", ""},
        },
    }

    for _, tc := range testCases {
        t.Run(tc.name, func(t *testing.T) {
            run(t, tc)
        })
    }
}

Example: Generic runTestCases

Using generics and the map[string]testCase version of the test case list, the boilerplate at the bottom of the function can be replaced with a call to runTestCases.

func TestSplit(t *testing.T) {
    type testCase struct { ... }

    run := func(t *testing.T, tc testCase) { ... }

    testCases := map[string]testCase{ ... }

    runTestCases(t, run, testCases)
}

func runTestCases[TC any](t *testing.T, run func(*testing.T, TC), testCases map[string]TC) {
    for name, tc := range testCases {
        t.Run(name, func(t *testing.T) {
            run(t, tc)
        })
    }
}

See Test suites and runCase for some other variations of table driven tests.

Multi-step tests using runStep

testing.T.Run is often used to run independent test cases, but it can also be useful for running multi-step test cases where each step must pass before running the next. The runStep function accomplishes this by wrapping t.Run and failing the parent test with t.FailNow if the subtest fails. Use it in place of t.Run for a multi-step test. The behaviour of runStep is similar to a test without any subtests, but t.Run gives additional scope to the test. The scope makes test failures more obvious by including details about the functionality being tested in the test name, and allows for any t.Cleanup functions to run.

func runStep(t *testing.T, name string, fn func(t *testing.T)) {
    if !t.Run(name, fn) {
        t.FailNow()
    }
}

Example: Using runStep

runStep(t, "create a resource", func(t *testing.T) {
    ...
})
runStep(t, "list resources includes the new resource", func(t *testing.T) {
    ...
})
runStep(t, "delete the resource", func(t *testing.T) {
    ...
})
runStep(t, "get a deleted resource returns an error", func(t *testing.T) {
    ...
})

Test suites

A test suite is a group of tests that share a function to setup dependencies, or share a dependency that takes a while to start. Sharing a dependency that is slow to start helps reduce the overall run time of the tests in a package. The tests in a suite will generally be closely related. They may all test the same function, the methods on a struct, or a set of related functions in a package.

The Go testing package in the standard library provides all the tools necessary to create a test suite. The testing.T.Cleanup function allows a setup function to register any cleanup that is required once the test ends. This helps keep related code together in one place.

Example: Test suite with setup and teardown

A test suite can have many forms, but will generally look something like the test below. The comments are for example purposes only. Each section is optional, and may be omitted.

func TestAPI(t *testing.T) {
    // Start any shared dependencies, sometimes known as "SetupSuite".
    // Any functions registered using t.Cleanup will act as "TearDownSuite".
    srv := startServer(t)

    // Define a setup method that will be run for each test, sometimes
    // known as "SetupTest".
    // Any functions registered in setup using t.Cleanup will act
    // as "TearDownTest".
    setup := func(t *testing.T, tc testCase) {
        ...
    }

    // Test cases follow
    ...
}

The test cases can be defined in different ways. They may be:

• sequential steps using runStep, where each step can call setup.
• a table driven test, calling setup in run, or the runCase variation.
• a list of test functions that accept testCase and that may be called by other suites to test a contract or implementation of some interface.

Refurbish large table tests with runCase

Table driven tests work well to group related tests together. If the number of test cases in the table grows beyond some point, especially when each case is complex, it can become difficult to work with the test.

The usual method of searching for a test case by name can become difficult with large numbes of test cases when:

• test names are too similar, there are long common prefixes on many tests
• there are other strings in the file that match the test names
• the translated test name contains many _ characters which replaced any number of non-alphabetic characters

There are a few ways to address this problem. Often the test cases can be split up into different test functions. If that is not an option, runCase can help make extremely large test functions easier to work with.

To address the problem, the []testCase or map[string]testCase in the table test can be replaced with calls to a run function that uses runCase.

func runCase(t *testing.T, name string, run func(t *testing.T)) {
    t.Helper()
    t.Run(name, func(t *testing.T) {
        t.Helper()
        t.Log("case:", name)
        run(t)
    })
}

This extra call to t.Log, and the two calls to t.Helper, add another line to the test output. The case: <test case name> log message will be prefixed with the filename and line number of the test case that failed. IDEs and text editors provide an easy way to jump to that file and line number. So when a test fails, the time to jump to each test case can be significantly reduced.

The change to a test function from a list of test cases to run calls can often be automated by find and replace.

Example: Using runCase

func TestArgs(t *testing.T) {
    type testCase struct {
        opts      options
        expected  []string
    }

    run := func(t *testing.T, name string, tc testCase) {
        t.Helper()
        runCase(t, name, func(t *testing.T) {
            actual := Args(tc.opts)
            assert.DeepEqual(t, actual, tc.expected)
        })
    }

    run(t, "defaults", testCase{
        opts: options{},
        expected: []string{},
    })
    run(t, "no change", testCase{
        opts: options{
            args: []string{"./script", "-test.timeout=20m"},
        },
        expected: []string{"./script", "-test.timeout=20m"},
    })
 ...
}