A Cookbook for Testing Data
summary
Practical guidance for testing data advocates generating fresh test data near test execution rather than using old dumps, and recommends marking and cleaning up generated rows after runs. Use focused assertions plus guard assertions (schema checks) for uncontrolled fields, watch for time-dependence (e.g., surge coefficients) that break tests, and build data with factories like factory_boy or Fixture Factory using domain-aware randoms (digits, hyphens, non-Latin) so edge cases appear predictably.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:20Test data matters
- 3:52Fresh test data
- 8:50Data near usage site
- 10:40Data structure like recipe
- 12:04String randomization issues
- 17:52Data combination randomization
- 19:24Negative tests and field combos
- 23:01Over-checking consequences
- 26:58Formal checks and boundaries
- 30:29Cleanup after tests
- 31:55Test data tools
- 34:44Summary and tips
- 35:28Q&A
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