Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

September 2022

Beyond API testing with Jest

Jest is a JavaScript-based testing framework that lets you test both front-end and back-end applications. Jest is great for validation because it comes bundled with tools that make writing tests more manageable. While Jest is most often used for simple API testing scenarios and assertions, it can also be used for testing complex data structures. In this tutorial, we will go through how to use Jest to test nested API responses and hopefully have fun in the process.

Chaos testing: Reliability for cloud-native apps

Reliability is a critical concern for software delivery teams. Every second of lackluster performance or service interruption comes with high costs. The consequences can extend beyond just monetary expenses and have a huge impact on a company’s reputation. In a survey conducted in 2022, participants reported that over 60% of digital infrastructure failures resulted in losses of $100,000 or more.

What role does ingenuity play in software development? ft. Bryan Finster of Defense Unicorns

Is it possible that the new tech and clever ideas can get in the way of adding value to our business? Bryan Finster, Distinguished Engineer at Defense Unicorn, sits down with Rob and shares how his perspective on solving business problems with code. Learn valuable insights on how we can keep the end user in mind while using technology to make their lives better.

Automate deployment of a Vue.js application to Firebase

A quick search of the internet will reveal many services available for freely hosting single page applications or static sites. Firebase is one of these services. Firebase is a development platform developed by Google that provides file storage, hosting, database, authentication, and analytics. It is free, provides an SSL certificate by default, and offers impressive speed across multiple regions. I have chosen Firebase for hosting our demo application in this tutorial.

Polyglot persistence vs multi-model databases for microservices

Microservice architecture is an application system design pattern in which an entire business application is composed of individual functional scoped services, which can scale on demand. Each team focuses on an individual service and builds it according to their skillset or language of choice. In addition to flexibility, this pattern provides: These features have made microservices architecture a popular choice for enterprises.

Speed up XCUITest execution with parallelism and test splitting

In this article, I’ll show you how to reduce the execution time of XCUITest (UI tests on iOS simulators) by splitting and running them in parallel. Automated tests and CI/CD platforms like CircleCI are necessary for iOS application development. It is important not only to introduce them once but to improve them continuously. When application code grows and automated tests increase, the execution time of build and test in CI/CD gets longer.

The Future of CI/CD: Challenge on the Horizon

Over the last 10 years, software development has shifted. Modern teams build applications on top of third-party dependencies, open source libraries, and more, which has dramatically increased complexity. With so much complexity in software development, how can today’s dev teams build with speed and agility while avoiding risk? Join CircleCI CTO, Rob Zuber, in the first of three executive webinars aimed at empowering CircleCI customers to optimize their software delivery practices.

Introducing the CircleCI Config SDK

We are excited to announce the new CircleCI Config SDK is now available as an open-source TypeScript library. Developers can now write and manage their CircleCI config.yml files using TypeScript and JavaScript. For developers used to the ecosystem and flexibility of a full-fledged programming language, sometimes YAML can feel limiting or intimidating. With the Config SDK you can define and generate your YAML config from type-safe and annotated JavaScript.

Experimenting our way to success ft. Aniel Sud, CTO of Optimizely

In this episode, Rob is joined by Optimizely CTO, Aniel Sud, to discuss the importance of experimenting for growth. Entrepreneurship and innovation require courage, but having courage can bring on emotions that make it difficult for us to experiment objectively. How do we hold our strong opinions loosely to press forward with new information?

Canary vs blue-green deployment to reduce enterprise downtime

Even before the cloud, no one liked deployment downtime. With applications hosted in traditional data centers that restricted access for local users, many organizations scheduled deployments when users were less likely to be using the applications, like the middle of the night. With widespread adoption of cloud-based, 24x7 environments available from all time zones, every hour of the day, easy-to-find deployment windows are gone.

DevOps top programming languages support engineering metrics goals

This post, authored by CircleCI Senior Technical Content Marketing Manager Jacob Schmitt, was originally published on The New Stack. One of the privileges of working in the continuous integration space is the unique perspective it offers into how software teams organize their work to deliver value quickly without sacrificing quality, security, or developer happiness. At CircleCI, we support more than 2 million developers running 90 million build, test, and deploy jobs each month.

Automate testing for a Vue.js application

One of the leading frameworks in the JavaScript community, Vue.js is a progressive framework for building reusable components for the web user interface. Its intuitive API and robust flexibility for handling front-end logic are just two of the reasons that Vue has been adopted by developers worldwide. In this tutorial, I will lead you through building a simple listing application that shows the names and roles of users. I will show you how to write tests for the application.

Mobile app security testing: tools and best practices

To minimize the security risks of an application, developers need their apps to stand up to stringent security testing. Fortunately, there are tools available that simplify and even automate these security tests. There are also best practices to guide and inform the testing process. In this article, I will cover the most common security issues for mobile apps and highlight popular security tests.

Deploy a Dockerized Laravel application

As web applications become more complex, software engineering teams must rely on many different products and services to create the best developer experience. The application development ecosystem has grown beyond version control and hosting deployment. Manually managing the deployment of new features across all services can create a serious bottleneck in the software development lifecycle. It also introduces the risk of human error.

Automate deployment of React applications to Firebase

Many platforms offer free hosting services for React and other JavaScript frameworks. These frameworks can be used for building single-page applications, which is handy when you need to launch a minimum viable product or a quick proof of concept. Your fellow developers are taking advantage of these tools, and you can too. To narrow down options, I will focus on Firebase in this tutorial.

Continuous performance testing for mobile apps

As of 2021, roughly 5.7 million mobile apps are available in app stores — 2.2 million for iOS and 3.48 million for Android users. Given the massive numbers, customers have a wide variety of choices. With such a high number of apps available, customer satisfaction is paramount, which means avoiding customer churn and retaining users.