Check if Dart code is running from a test or not(Flutter)

Recently I was upgrading some dependencies in a Flutter project that I hadn't touched for a while and my unit tests broke.

The culprit ended up being some changes that had been made to the firebase_analytics package. It's also my fault too because there were some logEvent calls being used inside code that I was testing in my unit tests. This is the error I was getting that caused the tests to fail:

Copycopy code to clipboard
1[core/no-app] No Firebase App '[DEFAULT]' has been created - call Firebase.initializeApp()

I talked about this issue in a previous post earlier this year, and in that case I ended up adding some mocks for FirebaseAnalytics using mockito.

This time I didn't really feel like going to that amount of effort so I opted for a quick fix. I know that the former is a better option but I thought I'd write about this method too because it could come in handy in other situations.

Checking if code is running in a test or not

It turns out that you can actually check whether code is being run as a test or not. You do it using Platform like this:

Copycopy code to clipboard
1import 'dart:io';
2
3final isTest = Platform.environment.containsKey('FLUTTER_TEST');

So if the above returns true, it means that a test is being run.

Fixing the logEvents issue

So I ended up just adding the above line to my code as a check, and used an early return if it was a test. I have an extension method specifically for sending events that looks like this:

Copycopy code to clipboard
1logEvent({Map<String, dynamic>? parameters}) {
2  _logger.d('Sending analytics event: $this');
3  if (parameters != null) {
4    FirebaseAnalytics.instance.logEvent(name: this, parameters: parameters);
5  } else {
6    FirebaseAnalytics.instance.logEvent(name: this);
7  }
8}

I changed it to this:

Copycopy code to clipboard
1logEvent({Map<String, dynamic>? parameters}) {
2  if (Platform.environment.containsKey('FLUTTER_TEST')) return;
3  _logger.d('Sending analytics event: $this');
4  if (parameters != null) {
5    FirebaseAnalytics.instance.logEvent(name: this, parameters: parameters);
6  } else {
7    FirebaseAnalytics.instance.logEvent(name: this);
8  }
9}

And my tests ran with no issues again! Like I said this solution isn't the best so if you want to read about using mocks instead feel free to check my other post out.