Testing, packaging and deploying custom code using MCS custom code test tools

In a previous post I have described how to setup your MCS custom code test tools. In this post I will describe how to test, package and deploy your custom code using these tools. You should have installed the MCS custom code tool and updated the toolsConfig.json file with the correct url, mobile backend id and OAuth data.

Test your code

Once you have implemented your custom code, you want to test it. Of course you can test it by uploading the implementation into MCS. However, it is much better to test it locally and make sure it works, before you upload it to MCS. Since your custom code probably uses MCS platform APIs, it is convenient to use the mcs-ccc as a local 'container'. Note that when you run the test, it will call the platform APIs in your instance in MCS, so if you insert data in the database, it ends up in the cloud, even though you are running the code locally!

Components of the MCS testing tools and communication with MCS instance

You can either run the tests that are defined in the toolsConfig.json or you can run tests in Postman or cUrl.

When you want to run the test from Postman or cURL, simple point to localhost:4000 instead of the  MCS path. Don't forget that the mcs-ccc runs on http, not https.

The correct values for the port can be found in the output of the console when you start mcs-ccc in verbose mode.

Instead of running tests from Postman or cURL, you can also run tests that are automatically generated in toolsConfig.json:

1. Run npm install
2. Run mcs-ccc toolsConfig.json --verbose
3. Open a separate command line
4. Run mcs-test <path to toolsConfig.json> <testname> --verbose In this case mcs-test toolsConfig.json getProductsprices --verbose
5. This returns the response in the command line

If you have a template parameter in your call, you have to hard code this in toolsConfig.json and run the test (you can spot these by looking for "PARAMETER").

Advantages of this approach are that the test is automatically generated. The disadvantage is that none of the results are validated. Last but not least, you have to hard code the parameters. For that reason we usually run real system tests in Postman. The testing tool can help the developer in the beginning, to make sure the code that is uploaded will run. It is more for 'smoke-testing' than for real testing of your code.

Package and deploy your code

Once you are ready to package and deploy your code to MCS, you can use mcs-deploy:

1. Navigate to the package
2. Run  mcs-deploy toolsConfig.json --verbose
3. Enter the username and password when prompted

You should see the implementation in the MCS API implementation page.

sales 1.0 added as default implementation after running mcs-deploy