Blockchain Development: Best Practices For Testing Apps In 2020

Testing Blockchain Application: It's all about the public blockchain that gives us the true power to transform how our technology moves our future. Yet checking the functionality of blockchain is very distinct from testing conventional applications.

We do have to take into account all the usual heuristics, such as how our app will respond when things beyond our control affect the network, whether people are capable of front-running our transactions and if our transactions will become too expensive to justify the existence of our application.

Testing Blockchain Application

Testers need to ensure that all blockchain components operate properly and that any associated applications delivered to the blockchain fabric reliably interact with each other. Testers should follow a best practice-based suite of testing approaches in Testing Blockchain Application which includes several paths: Shift Left, API, Functional, and Performance Testing here are:

1. Shift Left Testing

The need for software consistency provides a clear case for shift-left testing in every step of the value transfer process. More blockchain project teams use the Agile and DevOps methods for their efforts to build and test.

By moving tests to the left, teams may conduct different tests early and continuously repeat those tests. Providing early, iterative quality feedback during production reduces the number of errors that were discovered later in the lifecycle, where the effect on the company may be severe.

2. Testing API

Based on the application, the interaction between applications in and out of the blockchain environment must be discussed by API testing. Since a blockchain can emit events, it can induce blockchain behaviour through external calls or events from outside systems.

Find a transaction filed with an API. The transaction needs to be checked against different rules to establish a modified order which is then distributed by the blockchain. The API then receives a confirmation that it has updated the blockchain.

Testers must verify the interaction of applications in and out of the blockchain ecosystem at any stage of the process to verify proper configuration and handling of API requests and responses.

3. Functional Testing

As blockchain expands into new fields of use, functional testing of key components of blockchain, as well as the integrated ecosystem, is critical. Functional research tests use-case situations and relevant business procedures, such as smart contract behaviour.

4. Performance Testing

Blockchain performance monitoring involves finding performance bottlenecks, determining performance metrics and accessing when the application is ready for production.

At article press time, blockchain efficiency is hindered by an inability to scale – as an example; blockchain is currently unable to handle the amounts of transactions required to replace the financial service organizations' proprietary payment processing systems.

How Do You Test Blockchain Applications?

We believe that it's not very different from any other application which you'd test. Always apply the same logic and logical thinking that you already use for testing non-blockchain projects.

Of course, people working on blockchain projects need to have outstanding mathematical and cryptographic abilities, but when it comes to it, much of the work being done is just regular development work with standard test criteria.

Many of the testing techniques that you already know apply to the blockchain, such as boundary testing, performance testing, compliance testing and especially safety testing. Sometimes it's just a matter of familiarizing oneself with some of the popular blockchain testing tools already out there:

➤Ethereum

➤Ethereum Tester

➤Truffle

➤Ganache (formally Testrpc)

➤Populus

➤Manticore

➤Hyperledger Composer

➤Exonumia Testkit

➤Embark Framework

➤Corda Testing Tools

➤Things Testers Need To Consider

Block size: Block size would potentially vary with blockchain use. The payloads in the block would thus also differ in size. In several blockchains, each block is allocated in non-payload by less than 100 bytes. As of this writing, Bitcoin now has a fixed maximum limit of 1 MB per block. The argument is, testers need to determine how actions impacts from increasing block size. Which happens when the volume of new data going into a block reaches the blockchain application's maximum block size? How do they treat the block? Note one block may be assigned to multiple transactions.

Chain size: Blockchain assumes that it would have a permanent and full record of each value transfer transacted on the chain, and the chain size is infinite in theory.

Data transmission: Because of the blockchain peer-to-peer model, validating that the encrypted and decrypted data transmission mechanism works flawlessly is essential. A crucial evaluation situation is ensuring no data is lost.

Adding a block: Testers need to verify that a new block is added to the chain once a transaction is authenticated. That chain is unchangeable. It must be added correctly if a new block is added, as it can never be modified.

Concluding

The blockchain is an innovative technology providing solutions that go far beyond encrypted payments. When it grows into a digital transformation tool, blockchain provides a disruptive alternative and cost-saving to the existing centralized transaction and record-keeping processes that exist in global organizations today. As with every emerging technology, blockchain's performance and acceptance were predicated on its scalability. However, with blockchain, confidence in consensus is key to the credibility and consistency of each blockchain transaction. Continuous testing is an important element for confidence building and involves API testing as well as functional and performance testing.