Testing in Drone

Introduction

This guide is intended for XMPP Server developers who are building their server with Drone. It demonstrates how to add XMPP Interoperability and Standards Conformance tests integrated into a build & test pipeline. This assumes that you already have a pipeline established, and wish to add the additional checks.

The checks are executed within the pipeline by a plugin that we’re providing. The only prerequisite is that you’ve got a built XMPP server and have started it (presumably as a background service)

Assuming that you have a pre-existing pipeline that build your server and starts it for integration testing, then adding our plugin is as easy as adding one step to your pipeline, like this:

- name: runtests
  image: ghcr.io/xmpp-interop-testing/drone-xmpp-test:latest
  settings:
    host: xmppserver
    domain: shakespeare.lit

This example demonstrates one possible way to provision accounts. It assumes your server is running and reachable on the host xmppserver, serving the XMPP domain shakespeare.lit, and that it supports In-Band Registration (as defined in XEP-0077) to provision accounts. Other configuration methods are also available, and you can explore the full set of options in the sections below.

A Full Example

Drone relies heavily on containerization. The following example assumes that your pipeline is set up for building an XMPP server and making available the corresponding container image, called myorg/xmppserver”

To execute the tests from the XMPP Integration Testing Framework, the server needs to be running. That can be achieved by running your server as a service, as shown in this example:

services:
- name: xmppserver
  image: myorg/xmppserver:latest

Service containers are reachable at a hostname identical to the container name. The host on which your XMPP service is running will match the name value of the step.

Optionally, include a check for the health of your xmppserver service (or add a ‘sleep’) to allow your service to fully boot up. Refer to the Drone documentation for tips and tricks.

Next, you’re ready to add a step that runs the XMPP Interop Framework Testing plugin.

- name: runtests
  image: ghcr.io/xmpp-interop-testing/drone-xmpp-test:latest
  settings:
    host: xmppserver
    domain: shakespeare.lit
    adminAccountUsername: admin
    adminAccountPassword: admin
    enabledSpecifications: XEP-0115,XEP-0199,XEP-0352

The above assumes that your server is running and reachable on the host xmppserver, serving the XMPP domain shakespeare.lit and that it is provisioned with an administrative account (one that is allowed to create other users, per XEP-0133) that uses the username juliet and the provided password. You’ll find the full range of available configuration options below.

For completeness, here is the full pipeline, combining everything above:

kind: pipeline
type: docker
name: default

steps:
- name: runtests
  image: ghcr.io/xmpp-interop-testing/drone-xmpp-test:latest
  settings:
    host: xmppserver
    domain: shakespeare.lit
    adminAccountUsername: admin
    adminAccountPassword: admin
    enabledSpecifications: XEP-0115,XEP-0199,XEP-0352

services:
- name: xmppserver
  image: myorg/xmppserver:latest

Drone does not make available the XMPP stanza logs that are generated by the XMPP Interop Framework plugin. To have access to these logs, which are very helpful to diagnose test failures, we are still in search of a good solution. Do you know of one? Please let us know!

Configuration

Various options are available when calling xmpp-interop-testing/drone-xmpp-test, and whilst none of them are absolutely required, the defaults are unlikely to be perfect for everyone.

For the latest updates to the documentation of the configuration updates, consult the GitHub repository of the Drone plugin.

Provisioning Test Accounts

To be able to run the tests, the server that is being tested needs to be provisioned with test accounts. Three different mechanisms can be used for this:

• Admin Account - By configuring the username and password of a pre-existing administrative user, using the adminAccountUsername and adminAccountPassword configuration options, three test accounts will be created using XEP-0133: Service Administration functionality.
• Explicit Test Accounts - You can configure three pre-existing accounts that will be used for testing, using the accountOneUsername, accountOnePassword, accountTwoUsername, accountTwoPassword, accountThreeUsername and accountThreePassword configuration options.
• In-Band Registration - If no admin account and no explicit tests accounts are provided, in-band registration (XEP-0077) will be used to provision accounts.

For more information on provisioning accounts, consult the ‘Test Account Provisioning’ guide.

Next steps

Now that you have integrated the XMPP Interoperability and Standards Conformance tests into your build pipeline, it is time to start working with the tests!

We’ve compiled the following resources to help you with any run-time challenges that you may run into:

• Choosing what test to run - helps you choose how to disable specific tests (useful when you want to ignore a particular test for some reason).
• Diagnose test failures - explains what you can do to find the reason that test is failing. Did we identify an issue in your server software? Find out!

Splash image courtesy of Shahadat Rahman, Unsplash