Automate and Test During Integration

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• List ways to automate integration.
  
• Describe how to execute a CI process with a separate build system.
  
• Lists the types of integration tests available to run.
  
• List the tools to use per integration test type.
  
• Explain how integration tests can relate to instance types.
  

Automate Integration and Test

A robust continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) process allows your development team to work as efficiently as possible, with test suites that uncover errors throughout the development cycle. Integration and test automation help your team deliver high quality software fast while reducing manual setup and testing steps. With dependable processes in place, you can easily trigger data or code replication and scheduled jobs.

Here are some other ways to automate processes.

• Use NPM to manage tasks.
  
• Build code for an automated CI/CD process.
  
• Add the Storefront Reference Architecture (SFRA) as a NodeJS dependency.
  

Use NPM with CI/CD

NodeJS and its package manager NPM lets developers manage all tasks through the Package-Json-File in a single place. Use NPM as a task manager to create new tasks easily by adding them into the package.json file. Simply add the task under scripts, as in this example.

"scripts": {
"build": "npm run compile:js;npm run compile:fonts;npm run compile:scss;",
}, 

After the developer defines the tasks, they can run them from the command-line using the npm-run command.

> npm run build

Visual Studio Code provides a simple visualization of the NPM tasks.

Build Code for a CI/CD Process

Building code on B2C Commerce involves linting and bundling static files, such as javascript, CSS, and images.

• ESLint helps create consistent code that adheres to predefined styling rules and identifies errors during the build process.
  
• The Stylelint tool accomplishes the same tasks for SCSS and CSS.
  
• Module bundlers like Webpack or ParcelJS enable you to do client-side bundling.
  
• ISML Linter helps you determine if your project's templates (ISML files) follow a specified set of rules as defined by your development team.
  

These tools help structure JavaScript and CSS code into modules and optimize the modules during build time.

Add SFRA as a NodeJS Dependency

You can speed up the build process by using the local node_module cache instead of pulling the SFRA code from GitHub. Here’s how.

If you are extending SFRA for an implementation, define it as a NodeJS dependency in package.json and include scripts in the package.json file. When you add SFRA as a NodeJS dependency, the application is stored inside the node_modules folder.

Many build systems provide the ability to cache node-dependencies. This reduces build time and avoids cloning SFRA within a longer process on each CI process. Bundling scripts into a single command when setting up a project eliminates some of the repetitive tasks in your process.

This example shows a package.json file modified to include SFRA as a dependency and use scripts.

{
"name": "your application",
"version": "1.0.0",
....
"scripts": {
....
"build:sfra" : "cd salesforce-storefront-reference-architecture && npm run build"
"init:sfra": "rsync -a ./node _modules/sfra/ salesforce-storefront-reference-architecture",
"setup:project": "npm install && npm run init:sfra && npm build:sfra"
},
"dependency": {
"sfra": "https://github.com/SalesforceCommerceCloud/storefront-reference-architecture",
},
....
} 

Run this in a terminal or command prompt to download, install, and build SFRA.

npm run setup:project

To decrease build time, you can also run build tasks in parallel, for example using the Concurrently GitHub feature, as shown here.

"parallel:test+lint": "concurrently \"npm run test\" \"npm run lint\" "

This method pulls the latest SFRA code version from main. If you want a specific version, include a specific tag as a dependency.

Execute CI with a Separate Build System

You can execute your CI process with a separate build system. Common systems are Bitbucket Pipelines, GitHub Actions, CircleCi, AWS-CodeBuild, and Jenkins. Bitbucket Pipelines is an integrated CI/CD service built into Bitbucket. It allows you to automatically build, test, and even deploy your code based on a configuration file in your repository.

Because the SFRA repository provides a Bitbucket build pipeline, we focus on Bitbucket in this module. The same information applies to other build systems. 

When choosing a build system, consider whether you want to maintain your own build system, like Jenkins, or prefer to use an out-of-the-box solution such as Bitbucket Pipelines. You can modify the standard bitbucket-pipeline.yaml configuration to support the CI approach.

Let’s take a look at how to use npm-tasks inside a Bitbucket pipeline in combination with SFCC-CI.

Standard Approach

# This is a sample build configuration for Javascript.
# Check our guides at https://confluence.atlassian.com/x/VYk8Lw for more examples.
# Only use spaces to indent your .yml configuration.
# -----
# You can specify a custom docker image from Docker Hub as your build environment.
image: node:6.9.2
pipelines:
default:
- step:
script: # Modify the commands below to build your repository.
- npm install
- npm run lint
- npm test
- npm run compile:js
- npm run compile:scss
- npm run compile:fonts

Extended CI Approach

You can specify a custom docker image from Docker Hub as your build environment.

 image: node:10.16.4
pipelines:
pull-requests:
'**':
###
# Target environment sandbox
###
- step:
script:
##
# Summed up SFRA installment
##
- npm run setup:project
- npm run auth:interactive $client_ID $client_SECRET
##
# assuming we created data + code upload
##
- npm run dataupload 'common'
- npm run dataupload 'testdata'
- npm run code:deploy
##
# execute further instance specific build steps
##
- npm run test:acceptance:smoke
branches:
###
# Target environment development
###
release/v*:
- step:
Script:
##
# Summed up SFRA installment
##
- npm run setup:project
- npm run auth:interactive $client_ID $client_SECRET
##
# assuming we created data + code upload
##
- npm run dataupload 'common'
- npm run dataupload 'testdata'
- npm run code:deploy
##
# execute further instance specific build steps
##
- npm run test:acceptance:deep
tags:
###
# Target environment staging
###
'**':
- step:
script:
##
# Summed up SFRA installment
##
- npm run setup:project
- npm run auth:interactive $client_ID $client_SECRET
##
# assuming we created data + code upload
##
- npm run dataupload 'common'

GitHub Example

Here’s a GitHub example.

name: Development CI
on:
push:
branches: [ develop ]
jobs:
build:
name: Deploy - Integration instance
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
# Check out the repository
- uses: actions/checkout@v2
# Install Node.js
- uses: actions/setup-node@v1
with:
node-version: 10
- run: npm run setup:project
- run: npm run lint
- run: npm run auth:unattended ${{ secrets.CLIENT_ID }} ${{ secrets.CLIENT_SECRET }}
- run: npm run config:generate:environment ${{ secrets.INTEGRATION_ENV }}
- run: npm run dataupload 'common'
- run: npm run dataupload 'testdata'
- run: npm run code:deploy
name: Run ESLint on Pull Requests
on:
- pull_request
jobs:
build:
name: Run ESLint
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
# Check out the repository
- uses: actions/checkout@v1
# Install Node.js
- uses: actions/setup-node@v1
with:
node-version: 10
# Install your dependencies
- run: npm ci
- run: npm run lint

Test the Application

Testing the software application is a key part of the CI/CD process. Let’s take a look at the types of tests you can run, the tools you can use for each type, and how they relate to instance types.

function ensureTestEnvironment(req, res, next) {
if (System.getInstanceType() === System.PRODUCTION_SYSTEM) {
throw new Error('Request forbidden on this system');
}
return next();
}

With a representational state transfer (REST) application programming interface (API), the client initiates the transfer of representations of the server state.

This diagram shows how you can run different tests per instance. On an integration sandbox instance, for example, you might run unit tests, integration tests, and acceptance smoke tests. On the integration development instance, however, you might run a series of acceptance test suites.

Next Steps

In this unit, you explored ways to automate integration and how to execute your CI process with a separate build system. You looked at the available tests and tools and how they relate to instance types. Next, learn how to import and upload data, code, and metadata during integration.

Resources

• Trailhead: Salesforce B2C Commerce Scheduled Jobs
• Trailhead: Holiday Season Readiness with Salesforce B2C Commerce