12 10 2025 Meeting - vanderbilt-redcap/redcap_cypress GitHub Wiki

🚀 December Automated Testing Subcommittee

Meeting Agenda

🧠 Part 1: Structured Discussion (First Half)

Last month, we agreed to put Documentation in Wiki section of REDCap Cypress repo.

This month, let's review example and assign tasks.

Goal: Review an example of best practice documentation

Project + KANBAN configured: https://github.com/orgs/vanderbilt-redcap/projects/3/views/1

Task #1: Review Project Board and Assign Users

Reference: Project Board

A. Writing & Maintaining Tests

Issue: #437 - https://github.com/vanderbilt-redcap/redcap_rsvc/issues/437

  • What coding standards should we enforce for clarity?
  • How do we make onboarding have less friction?

B. Environment & Configuration

Issue: [#438] - https://github.com/vanderbilt-redcap/redcap_rsvc/issues/438

  • Do we need a shared template for environment setup?
  • Should we offer guidance on secure handling of secrets?

C. CI/CD Integration

Issue: [#439](https://github.com/vanderbilt-redcap/redcap_rsvc/issues/s?

  • Integrating automated tests into pipelines

  • Handling flaky tests and build failures

  • Which pipeline stages should run tests?

  • How do we triage flaky tests?

D. Test Data Strategy

Issue: [#440](https://github.com/vanderbilt-redcap/redcap

  • When do we prefer mocks vs. real endpoints?
  • How does test data isolation work within the framework?

E. Test Maintenance & Review

Issue: [#441](https://github.com/vanderbilt-redcap/redcap_rsvc

What should happen to a test that is deprecated behavior? Is it simply deleted? Something else?

F. Change Management

Issue: #442
Discussion Points:

  • Local/site-level change management for REDCap version updates.

Within a site, each institution needs some guidelines on how to handle changes. For example ... how should a site handle a new version of REDCap being released? Is there a standard way to update?

  • Consortium-level change management (likely out of scope for this group).
  • File naming stability for feature tests.

G. Coverage & Instrumentation

Issue: [#443](https://github.com/vanderbilt-redcap/redce for using coverage tools?

  • Should we build tests around biggest gaps?

🛠️ Part 2: Working Meeting (Second Half)

Goal: Hands-on collaboration and problem-solving.

Reminder of what we could talk about:

Open Q&A

Bring your questions — no issue too small.

Live Debugging

Work through a test failure or CI/CD issue together.

Mini Code Review

Share a test or config snippet for group feedback.

Tool Demos

Quick walkthroughs of helpful tools or scripts — for example, did you leverage AI in some useful way we should know about?

Pairing & Collaboration

Break into small groups to tackle specific challenges.

External Module Testing with REDCap Cypress

If no Q&A topics arise, demo External Module build using REDCap Cypress.

Main Observations:

  1. No automatic method to pull commands
  2. No automatic method to pull step definitions
  3. No automatic method to pull fixtures

✅ Next Steps

  • Assign owners for drafting best practice documentation.
  • Capture decisions in GitHub Project board.