prediction-testing

prediction-testing is a test runner, simlar to Jest, vitest or ava, that focuses on testing predictive functions (e.g. search, auto-complete, or ML).

When you SHOULD use prediction-testing

• you have tons of test cases, and your tests purely compare inputs and outputs of the function under test
• you are testing a statistical model, or a predictive function, where 100% successful test results are impossible or impractical
• you are testing a (flaky) legacy system

When you SHOULD NOT use prediction-testing

• when your tests are few, and predominantely example-based; use the conventional test runners instead (jest, ava, vitest)
• when you require your testing framework to do all sorts of magic (auto-mocking, spies, etc)

Before Getting Started

Before looking at code examples, some notes on the design:

1. Unlike tools like jest or vitest, prediction-testing's CLI does not provide a runtime, but is imported as a library. Check the "Why No Runtime?" section on the reasoning.
2. Though only required minimally, the library depends on using effect (the missing standard library for TypeScript). At minimum, your function under test has to return an Effect. If your function doesn't already do so, checkout the Usage below, to see how to trivially convert it.

Further, a cautionary note on stability:

• The library is still in alpha, and will, regularly, without warning, release breaking changes.
• A beta phase is planned, which will keep releasing breaking changes, but provide guidance on migration paths, or even code-mods for automatic migration.

Usage

With your package manager of choice, install the following packages:

@creative-introvert/prediction-testing
@creative-introvert/prediction-testing-cli
effect

The examples use pnpm and pnpx + tsx to execute the files. Replace with whatever you use in your setup (e.g. npm and ts-node, or yarn and tsc + node, etc.)

With CLI

Define your test-suite.

// my-test-suite.ts
import * as CLI from '@creative-introvert/prediction-testing-cli';
import {Effect} from 'effect';

const myFunction = (input: number) => Promise.resolve(input * 1.7);

void CLI.run({
    testSuite: {
        // Convert myFunction to Effect-returning.
        program: (input: number) => Effect.promise(() => myFunction(input)),
        testCases: [
            {input: 0, expected: 0},
            {input: 1, expected: 2},
            {input: 2, expected: 3},
            {input: 3, expected: 4},
            {input: 4, expected: 5},
        ],
    },
    testSuiteName: 'simple',
    // Currently, test results are written to the file-system.
    // This will be replaced by an SQLite backend soon™.
    dirPath: '.metrics',
    filePostfix: 'ptest',
});

Summarize

pnpx tsx my-test-suite.ts summarize

=============================================================================
                                   SUMMARY
=============================================================================
index | id       | input | tags | label | expected | result | previous result
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1/5   │ 5feceb66 │ 0     │      │ TP    │ 0        │ 0      │ ∅
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2/5   │ 6b86b273 │ 1     │      │ FP    │ 2        │ 1.7    │ ∅
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3/5   │ d4735e3a │ 2     │      │ FP    │ 3        │ 3.4    │ ∅
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4/5   │ 4e074085 │ 3     │      │ FP    │ 4        │ 5.1    │ ∅
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5/5   │ 4b227777 │ 4     │      │ FP    │ 5        │ 6.8    │ ∅
=============================================================================
index | id       | input | tags | label | expected | result | previous result
=============================================================================

======================================
                 STATS
======================================
TP | TN | FP | FN | precision | recall
--------------------------------------
1  | 0  | 4  | 0  | 0.20      | 1.00
======================================

Summarize With Labels Filter

pnpx tsx my-test-suite.ts summarize --labels TP

=============================================================================
                                   SUMMARY
=============================================================================
index | id       | input | tags | label | expected | result | previous result
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1/1   │ 5feceb66 │ 0     │      │ TP    │ 0        │ 0      │ ∅
=============================================================================
index | id       | input | tags | label | expected | result | previous result
=============================================================================

======================================
                 STATS
======================================
TP | TN | FP | FN | precision | recall
--------------------------------------
1  | 0  | 0  | 0  | 1.00      | 1.00
======================================

Write Test Results

pnpx tsx my-test-suite.ts write

Diff

Assuming you have (1) previous test results, and (2) something changed, e.g. the inputs/expecations of your test suite, or the function-under-test implementation.

diff --git a/my-test-suite.ts b/my-test-suite.ts
index 21cd713..ab1b6dc 100644
--- a/my-test-suite.ts
+++ b/my-test-suite.ts
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 import * as CLI from '@creative-introvert/prediction-testing-cli';
 import {Effect} from 'effect';
 
-const myFunction = (input: number) => Promise.resolve(input * 1.7);
+const myFunction = (input: number) => Promise.resolve(input * 2);
 
 void CLI.run({
     testSuite: {

pnpx tsx my-test-suite.ts diff
# or, if you want it to process.exit(1) on diff
pnpx tsx my-test-suite.ts diff --ci

=============================================================================
                                   SUMMARY
=============================================================================
index | id       | input | tags | label | expected | result | previous result
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1/4   │ 6b86b273 │ 1     │      │ TP    │ 2        │ 2      │ 1.7
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2/4   │ d4735e3a │ 2     │      │ FP    │ 3        │ 4      │ 3.4
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3/4   │ 4e074085 │ 3     │      │ FP    │ 4        │ 6      │ 5.1
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4/4   │ 4b227777 │ 4     │      │ FP    │ 5        │ 8      │ 6.8
=============================================================================
index | id       | input | tags | label | expected | result | previous result
=============================================================================

======================================
                 DIFF
======================================
TP | TN | FP | FN | precision | recall
--------------------------------------
0  │ 0  │ -1 │ 0  │ 0.05      │ 0.00
======================================

Checkout workspace/examples/src/with-cli for more examples.

pnpx tsx <file-path>
# e.g.
pnpx tsx ./workspace/examples/src/with-cli/simple.ts

Without CLI

For full control over execution, and if you're not afraid of using effect you may simply import the runner functions individually.

import * as PT from '@creative-introvert/prediction-testing';
import {Console, Duration, Effect, Stream} from 'effect';

type Input = number;
type Result = number;

const program = (input: Input) =>
    Effect.promise(() => Promise.resolve(input * 2)).pipe(
        Effect.delay(Duration.millis(500)),
    );

const testCases: PT.TestCase<Input, Result>[] = [
    {input: 0, expected: 0},
    {input: 1, expected: 1},
    {input: 2, expected: 2},
    {input: 3, expected: 3},
    {input: 4, expected: 4},
];

await PT.testAll({
    testCases,
    program,
}).pipe(
    PT.runFoldEffect,
    Effect.tap(testRun => Console.log(PT.Show.summary({testRun}))),
    Effect.runPromise,
);

Checkout workspace/examples/src/as-library for more examples.

pnpx tsx <file-path>
# e.g.
pnpx tsx ./workspace/examples/src/as-library/simple.ts

Why No Runtime?

Tools like jest and vitest provide a dedicated CLI, which the user can run, separately from other entrypoints into their app. For example, jest provides the jest binary, which, magically, finds all the test files, and executes them, reporting on the results.

Unfortunately, this comes with a lot of complexity:

1. Unless the user provides their tests as ES5 JavaScript (not a thing these days), jest has to figure out how transpile/compile the source. Given the level of, let's call it, variation in JavaScript land (Typescript, and its many different configurations, custom runtimes like svelte, ESM vs CommonJS, etc), this is no easy feat. The amount of code required for enabling this easily overtrumps the actual test runner.
2. As jest (etc) essentially behave as a framework (jest calls your code) as opposed to a library (you call jest), customization requires additional complexity in the framework, which now has to provide various entrypoints into its execution.

Alternatively, the library could hook into an existing test runner (I've seen that vite provides some programatic context), but I have not yet looked deeper into that. Though saving me from solving this problem myself, this would likely come with its own limitations.

Providing prediction-testing as a pure library is not as satisfying and convenient as a dedicated binary, but is both simpler, and more easily customizable.