Lorenzo Greco: Robot Testing in Flutter

# Testing with Flutter and Dart: Introducing the Robot Testing Pattern

Testing is an important part of the development process, but it can be difficult to write tests that are readable and not filled with boilerplate code. In this talk, Jake Wharton introduces the “Robot pattern,” an alternative way of writing tests that helps define a common approach within the team. This pattern allows for more readable tests, the ability to reuse more code, and the isolation of implementation details, making tests understandable to non-technical stakeholders and teammates outside of the engineering team.

## About the Speaker

Jake Wharton is a software engineer at Square and a contributor to a variety of open-source projects, including the Android operating system.

## Video Transcript

Roberto Greco, a principal mobile engineer at Primary Field, introduces the Robot pattern for testing with Flutter and Dart. He discusses the three main categories of tests—unit tests, widget tests, and integration tests—and the benefits and drawbacks of each.

Integration tests, in particular, provide developers with the highest confidence but come at a cost in terms of maintenance and execution speed. The Robot pattern allows for more efficient testing by introducing a common approach for writing tests within the team. By using this pattern, tests become more readable, reusable, and easier to understand for non-technical stakeholders.

Greco walks through the traditional way of writing integration tests and introduces the Robot pattern to improve the process. The Robot pattern reduces the length and complexity of integration tests by dividing them into smaller, more manageable functions, resulting in code that is easier to write, read, and maintain.

Greco’s talk provides a valuable insight into the benefits of using a common approach to testing with the Robot pattern that results in more efficient testing, better collaboration, and more reliable functionality in apps.

Special thanks to [Flutter Meetup](https://fluttermeetup.com/) for organizing this talk.

Keywords/tags: flutter, dart, robot testing, jake wharton, flutterdev, android, iOS, multiplatform, meetup.

Testing is a crucial part of our development process, but sometimes we tend to write very verbose tests that are hard to understand and full of boilerplate code.

In this talk, I’ll introduce you to the “Robot pattern”, an alternative way of writing tests that will help you to define a common approach within your team to make tests more readable, reuse more code and isolate implementation details so that tests are also more understandable by non-technical stakeholders and teammates outside of the engineering team.