Here's an idea: this page will be my test content. I'll include one of everything in here and use it for a very quick smoke-test
I don't currently have any [many] automated checks on this website – not something I'm proud of but a reality I'm willing to accept. I want to get up and running quickly and I'm still experimenting with this technology (Gatsby primarily) so borrowing a little is acceptable. If I start incurring interest on the debt I'll consider paying it back.
So for now I perform an unscripted manual check quite naturally. I look at the live site after I've made changes to it or added new content.
This page is somewhere I can note the features I have used on the site – a single place to quickly review everything. If I automate the natural checks I'm making I can start by checking what's on this page.
Process
- Add a new feature to the site
- Include an example of it here
- Periodically check everything on this page is working
⚠️ Would I notice if I added new features and forgot to include them here?
⚠️ Would I notice if any of them broke?
🤖 And that's why we automate
Features of this site so far
JSX and Markdown
I'm not checking on this, it's a feature of gatsby-plugin-mdx
However, shortcodes are the JSX components that I pass in to MDXProvider and my automated checks wouldn't tell me if they were missing
Expected shortcodes
BlockQuote
Example of citation URL without a pathname
dc5b.com –DC5B is going on behind the scenes
WebGL model view projection
developer.mozilla.org [...] WebGL_model_view_projectionThis article explores how to take data within a WebGL project, and project it into the proper spaces to display it on the screen. It assumes a knowledge of basic matrix math using translation, scale, and rotation matrices. It explains the three core matrices that are typically used when composing a 3D scene: the model, view and projection matrices.
Emoji
<Emoji label="positive checkmark">✅</Emoji>
✅ My Emoji component adds accessibility attributes around an emoji
Link
The Gatsby <Link> is available to all MDX layouts
Frontmatter
Optional data about a Note page.
| Key | Use |
|---|---|
afterthoughts | end of note page |
date | sort of notes index |
description | metadata descriptions |
image | displayed at top of note page |
image | referenced in metadata image |
imageAlt | alt text for image (above) |
title | listed in notes index |
title | metadata titles for note page |
title | top of note page |
title | window title for note page |
Footnotes
I don't have "many" automated checks
Initially I wrote that I don't have "any" automated checks, then I started to notice automated checks that I had ignored:
Linting should happen whenever I save, assuming the format of the document is correct. If it fails I notice. This is a frequent, super cheap check that is very easy to keep green.
Deployment and build checks are another frequent, unobtrusive check that should not be underrated. When I push to my repo the automated pipeline runs build and deploy tasks. If there are errors then deployment fails and I notice.