wirepig

wirepig

Wirepig helps you test software that relies on something over a network. If your code talks to any of the following, then wirepig can help:

• HTTP Services (AWS, Twilio, another application you're building, ...)
• Databases (mysql, postgres, ...)
• Caches (redis, memcached, ...)
• Rate Limiters (divvy, ...)
• anything else accessed by a TCP connection

Wirepig spins up an HTTP or TCP server that can programmatically behave like your software's actual dependencies. Simply tell wirepig what kinds of requests to emulate and point your application at it. No monkey-patching the runtime, no external processes, no dependency injection, just honest-to-goodness sockets.

Requires NodeJS >=14.

• Documentation
• Types

Quick Start

Install with your favorite package manager:

npm

npm install --save-dev wirepig

yarn

yarn add --dev wirepig

Pull in however you get your modules:

ESM

import { http, tcp, helpers, errors } from 'wirepig';

CommonJS

const { http, tcp, helpers, errors } = require('wirepig');

And get to mocking:

const dep = await http();

const mock = dep.mock({
  req: { method: 'POST', pathname: '/bloop' },
  res: { statusCode: 200, body: 'bloop' },
});

const res = await request.post(`http://localhost:${dep.port}/bloop`)

assert.strictEqual(res.statusCode, 200);
assert.strictEqual(res.text, 'bloop');

await dep.teardown();

Here we:

• Initialized an HTTP server as a substitute for our dependency. It's listening on an ephemeral port and ready to go. See the docs if you need to start wirepig on a well-known port.
• Declared a request we expect our server to receive from our application and the response to emit when it does. This mock will only handle a single request.
• Instructed our application to make an HTTP request to our server and asserted the response we received. In reality, this network call would probably be buried deep within your application.
• Closed our HTTP server.

It's highly recommended that you utilize a test runner's lifecycle hooks to properly manage your mocks:

before(async function () {
  this.dep = await tcp();
});

afterEach(function () {
  this.dep.reset();
});

after(async function () {
  await this.dep.teardown();
});

it('sends a GET request to redis', async function() {
  this.dep.mock({
    req: ['*2', '$3', 'GET', '$8', 'ns:bloop', ''].join('\r\n'),
    res: ['$17', 'bloop-the-big-one', ''].join('\r\n'),
  });

  const client = createClient({ url: `redis://localhost:${this.dep.port}` });
  await client.connect();

  assert.strictEqual(await client.get('ns:bloop'), 'bloop-the-big-one');

  await client.disconnect();
});

• Before the test suite runs, spin up the server you need.
• After Each test runs, reset the server. This will assert that all previously declared mocks have been satisfied and clear any internal state.
• After the test suite runs, close the server.
• During a test, declare any mocks needed.

Making sense? Head over to the docs for a full accounting of what wirepig can do.

Troubleshooting

When things get confounding, set the NODE_DEBUG environment variable to one of the following:

$NODE_DEBUG	Behavior
wirepig	Logs general diagnostics
wirepig.match	Logs diagnostics related to request matching
wirepig*	Logs all diagnostics

With the expanded output in your console, you ought to be able to figure out what's going on.

Alternatively, a tool like Wireshark can help you monitor all packets flowing between your application and wirepig, and might yield a clue.

A Brief Note on the Design

Wirepig occupies a space similar to nock except instead of overriding node internals, wirepig operates as an independent server your application sends real requests to. Since you spin up wirepig in the same process as your tests, you still have programmatic control over it.

I'm optimistic this design will offer a few notable upsides:

• Better Tests: Overriding node internals in our tests means we aren't actually testing the networking stack used in production. Wirepig pushes the mocking boundary out of your application code and into the network itself while still being easy to operate.
• More Robust: Node internals change on every release and may break any overriding (example: https://github.com/nock/nock/pull/1182). Since wirepig steers clear of that technique, it'll likely be robust to new versions of node.
• Tooling: By sending packets out over a network, we get to leverage the deep bench of excellent networking tools available to us (like Wireshark).

The wirepig API strives to offer every desirable feature in a simple package, often at the expense of terseness. For example, there's no built-in magic for handling JSON, even though it's an exceptionally common serialization format (there are some handy helpers, though). First and foremost, wirepig wants to be a strong foundation other projects can build on top of (for example, a redis-specific mocking library).

Of course, wirepig isn't the best tool for every job, and even though it can technically mock a postgres database, that might not be the best idea depending on your needs. Other tools I highly recommend:

• Docker Compose is a nice way to run tests against real applications like redis or mysql, if a bit heavyweight.
• Localstack does a remarkable job emulating AWS' public API.

Contributing

Wirepig is open source, but only cautiously open to code contributions. Please do not open a pull request as a way to introduce a change (if you do, I will likely close it and ask you to please file an issue).

That said, I'm eager for any feature requests, bug reports, or general feedback. Please submit an issue to get in touch and we'll take things from there.