How do test off-chain client interaction without a full running chain?

[dckc]

I'd like to write tests that capture how my off-chain clients are going to interact with my contract. I could do it with a full blockchain node, but the iteration time is slow, compared to ava testing, and the debugging facilities are not as good.

Is there something at the ava level that I can use? If so, how?

[dckc]

Recall from Smart Wallet Dapp Architecture that clients interact with the chain in 2 main ways:

• query vstorage
• sign and broadcast offers

Clients can't directly make calls such as E(zoe).offer(...) from off chain; they have to sign and broadcast a transaction with instructions for walletFactory contract to do it for them. And they can't make queries such as E(publicFacet).getInfo(). They can only read vstorage. It's important to do functional testing at this level.

By way of example, see tests for open vault, adjust balances, close vault, etc. in test-vaults-integration.js:

agoric-sdk/packages/vats/test/bootstrapTests/test-vaults-integration.js

Lines 86 to 105 in ba3b776

	test('open vault', async t => {
	console.time('open vault');
	const { walletFactoryDriver } = t.context;
	const wd = await walletFactoryDriver.provideSmartWallet('agoric1open');
	await wd.executeOfferMaker(Offers.vaults.OpenVault, {
	offerId: 'open-vault',
	collateralBrandKey,
	wantMinted: 5.0,
	giveCollateral: 9.0,
	});
	console.timeLog('open vault', 'executed offer');
	t.like(wd.getLatestUpdateRecord(), {
	updated: 'offerStatus',
	status: { id: 'open-vault', numWantsSatisfied: 1 },
	});
	console.timeEnd('open vault');
	});

These tests use a t.context made with makeSwingsetTestKit that provides walletFactoryDriver and a mock storage, as well as an EV(x).m(...) analog to E(x).m(...) for crossing the kernel/vat boundary.

[dckc]

The gimix hackathon project has another example. It's not quite as high-fidelity, but it's more self-contained...

agoric-sdk/packages/zoe/test/unitTests/contracts/gimix/test-gimix.js

Line 257 in 5e1e353

test('execute work agreement', async t => {

[dckc]

dapp-offer-up has a sequence of tests of increasing fidelity, culminating in:

https://github.com/Agoric/dapp-offer-up/blob/58d5ee78e302bfbcb2696375be57d9a19a0fca41/contract/test/test-contract.js#L162