A learning experience

Just like MageTestFest v1 (held in The Netherlands in 2017), this event is not just a conference. It is a learning experience. The event its purpose is to practically help developers embrace tests while coding, so that the quality of extensions and projects goes up. And a higher quality is good for developers, managers (thus companies) and clients.

Four workshops

The low-priced workshops that MageTestFest offers are another way of getting to that endpoint: Better code. In the 2 days prior to the main event - on March 5th and March 6th to be precise - there will be four workshops in total. This was a hard choice we needed to make: You need to pick two. Each day, there will be held two workshops simultaneously.

Tip: Attend the hackathon as well, so that you can use that day to pick the brains of the teachers of the workshops that you missed out on.

Day one: Magento Functional Testing Framework

The workshops are kicked off by Tom Erskine, one of the Magento developers behind the Magento Functional Testing Framework. The adoptation of MFTF has been slow so far. However, this is going to change, now that the Magento Marketplace is embracing MFTF tests in its measurement system and now that the Magento core modules are also shipped with MFTF tests. Tom will explain during this workshop how to setup your system for running MFTF tests, how to create simple XML-based test for your code and how to create advanced logic in the MFTF as well.

If you are creating extensions, this is definitely something you will want to learn about.

Day one: Refactoring legacy code

Vinai Kopp is present to guide you into refactoring legacy code using tests. His workshop deals with various types of tests (unit, integration, functional) to assure that whatever was working in your old application (Magento 1 for instance) will still work as expected in the new application (Magento 2 for instance) as well. Everybody is able to refactor code, but refactoring code without breaking stuff requires proper testing. This workshop will not only have its fair share of groupies (because of Vinai) but will also be vital for migrations from old Magento instances to Magento 2 and/or microservice-oriented setups.

Day two: Performance testing

On day two, the first workshop will be about measuring performance while developing, while troubleshooting or while debugging. While this is often neglected, this topic might be one of the most vital when dealing with quality of code. How stupid is that a new feature that is rolled out to production, actually degrades performance? Well, let me tell you, it is very stupid.

Most developers know about the tools already (New Relic, Blackfire, Zend Z-Ray, XHProf or simply manual scripts to count stuff). But how to properly implement this in your workflow and your deployment pipeline, to guarantee that changes don't lead to performance loss? With this workshop, you will explore together with Matthéo Geoffray how to implement the tools propery in such a way that everybody actually benefits from this.

Day two: Integration testing

Last but not least, there is a workshop on integration testing by Fabian Schmengler. Nuff said. Fabian will guide you through the proper setup of integration tests in Magento and also guide you into how to create meaningful tests.

Get on board now

MageTestFest is bound to be a huge success. Make sure to get your tickets in time, because we are seeing now a small rush for the workshop tickets of which the numbers are limited. And if you can't make it to the workshops, do make sure to attend the event and the hackathon, because they will be da bomb: magetestfest.com/tickets