Modern software development processes often encourage, if not mandate, that various levels of tests are written for an application. The majority of popular languages and frameworks have built-in tools to help with developing integration and unit tests, which in essence, are pre-defined scripts that simulate the various controls and actions that your application has set up.
This means that during a standard development process, you can ensure new updates, features and other changes don't break existing functionality.
These tests once written can be run locally before committing your changes to your version control system, then in turn, run on your staging / testing / production infrastructure.
Adding testing to your deployment strategy
As tests can be run with a simple command, it's normally straightforward to include these tests as part of your deployment strategy.
You may opt to run tests away from your infrastructure, using a build task such as what's configured with our Build Pipeline, especially if you don't have direct access to a command line on the server.
Just bear in mind that if your tests require access to a database, remote access will need to be provided to our build servers. You can have a look at our troubleshooting guide that outlines further information on connecting to third party services via the build.
Further reading
We'd highly recommend the following websites and guides outlining various testing methodology that can be used across popular frameworks:
And if you have any questions about how you might be able to improve your workflow with application tests during a deployment, please don't hesitate to ask.
