Data Unit Testing for R.

testdat

Overview

testdat is designed to ease data validation, particularly for complex data processing, inspired by software unit testing. testdat extends the strong and flexible unit testing framework already provided by testthat with a family of functions and reporting tools focused on checking of data frames.

Features include:

• A fully fledged test framework so you can spend more time specifying tests and less time running them

• A set of common methods for simply specifying data validation rules

• Repeatability of data tests (avoid unintentionally breaking your data set!)

• Data-focused reporting of test results

Installation

You can install the released version of testdat from CRAN with:

install.packages("testdat")

And the development version from GitHub with:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("socialresearchcentre/testdat")

Usage

See the Introduction to testdat vignette for a detailed introduction.

library(testdat, warn.conflicts = FALSE)
#> Loading required package: testthat
library(dplyr, warn.conflicts = FALSE)

x <- tribble(
  ~id, ~pcode, ~state, ~nsw_only,
  1,   2000,   "NSW",  1,
  2,   3123,   "VIC",  NA,
  3,   2123,   "NSW",  3,
  4,   12345,  "VIC",  3
)

with_testdata(x, {
  test_that("id is unique", {
    expect_unique(id)
  })
  
  test_that("variable values are correct", {
    expect_values(pcode, 2000:2999, 3000:3999)
    expect_values(state, c("NSW", "VIC"))
    expect_values(nsw_only, 1:3) # by default expect_values allows NAs
  })
  
  test_that("filters applied correctly", {
    expect_base(nsw_only, state == "NSW")
  })
})
#> Test passed 
#> -- Failure ('<text>:18:5'): variable values are correct ------------------------
#> get_testdata() has 1 records failing value check on variable `pcode`.
#> Variable set: `pcode`
#> Filter: None
#> Arguments: `<int: 2000L, 2001L, 2002L, 2003L, 2004L, ...>, <int: 3000L, 3001L, 3002L,`
#> get_testdata() has 1 records failing value check on variable `pcode`.
#> Variable set: `pcode`
#> Filter: None
#> Arguments: `  3003L, 3004L, ...>, miss = <chr: NA, "">`
#> Error in `reporter$stop_if_needed()`:
#> ! Test failed