What is Smoke Testing?

Before writ­ing any code, this les­son cov­ers what a smoke test actu­al­ly is, why it sits in a dif­fer­ent cat­e­go­ry from unit tests and end-to-end tests, and when it earns its keep on a Craft CMS project. 

We’ll look at the kinds of bugs smoke tests are designed to catch: the ones that slip past your deploy tool’s ​“suc­cess” report because the fail­ure is in the ren­dered out­put, not in the deploy­ment process itself. We’ll also draw clear lines between smoke test­ing, unit test­ing, full end-to-end test­ing, and visu­al regres­sion so you know which tool fits which problem. 

By the end, you’ll be able to explain in a sen­tence what a smoke test does and why every Craft site that mat­ters deserves one.

What you’ll learn:

• A work­ing def­i­n­i­tion of smoke test­ing and the ques­tion it answers
• Where smoke tests fit rel­a­tive to unit tests, E2E tests, and visu­al regression
• The kinds of Craft CMS fail­ures that only smoke tests catch
• Why deploy tools report­ing ​“suc­cess” isn’t the same as a work­ing site