CDK V2 Snapshot Testing with assertions (alpha lib)

With CDK V1 and CDK V2 the testing libraries created a little bit of confusion - at least on my side :) . What to import and how to test.

So I just wanted to share a snapshot code snippet in Typescript to use a snapshot test in CDK V2.

Assume you have a "user" stack, which you want to refactor. So, make a snapshot test:

import { Template } from "@aws-cdk/assertions-alpha";
import * as cdk from 'aws-cdk-lib';
import { User } from '../lib/user';


describe("User", () => {
    test("snapshot after refactor", () => {
        const stack = new cdk.Stack();

        const env = {
            account: '5555555555',
            region: "eu-central-1"
        }
        const user = new User(stack, "user", { env })
        const template = Template.fromStack(user);
        expect(template).toMatchSnapshot();


    });
});

If you have a file, e.g. "user.test.ts" in your "/test" subdirectory, the first npm run test will create a snapshot in test/__snapshots__/.

First time you see:

 PASS  test/user.test.ts
  user
    ✓ snapshot after refactor (288 ms)

 › 1 snapshot written.
Snapshot Summary
 › 1 snapshot written from 1 test suite.

Test Suites: 1 passed, 1 total
Tests:       1 passed, 1 total
Snapshots:   1 written, 1 total
Time:        4.698 s, estimated 6 s
Ran all test suites.

If you now change anything and a different CloudFormation Template is generated you will notice.

I just changed one username from "gernot" to "gernot2" and npm run test gives:

...
          ],
    -         "UserName": "gernot",
    +         "UserName": "gernot2",

When is this useful?

If you refactor code like creating a base Construct/Object.
At first, you dont`t want to change any functionality.

This snapshot test will prove that.

Happy CDK-ing!

Thanks for a nice picture:

Photo by Marco Bianchetti on Unsplash