Stateful Property-Based Testing with PropEr in Erlang

Testing complex, stateful systems can feel like aiming at a moving target. Traditional unit tests often miss the subtle bugs that emerge only after a specific sequence of operations. This text-based course guides you through stateful property-based testing in Erlang, giving you the tools to automatically generate, run, and shrink test cases for complex APIs. You will transition from writing manual assertions to designing robust state machines that model your system's behavior over time. By defining states, transitions, and preconditions, you will enable PropEr to discover hidden concurrency issues and edge cases that traditional testing methodologies overlook. What you'll learn: - Understand the core principles of property-based and stateful testing - Model complex API behaviors using PropEr state machine behaviors - Generate and validate dynamic test sequences to uncover deep integration bugs - Handle tricky data types, including Unicode and binary inputs, in your test generators - Analyze and debug failing test cases using automated shrinking techniques - Structure your test suites to run efficiently in modern Erlang build workflows This course begins with foundational concepts, defining what stateful testing is and how it differs from stateless property generation. You will then progress through step-by-step written explanations and code examples, building a complete model of an API from scratch, refining its generators, and interpreting the test outputs. This course is designed for Erlang developers who want to elevate their testing standards. No prior experience with PropEr or property-based testing is required, though a basic familiarity with Erlang syntax and OTP concepts is recommended. Start reading today to build bulletproof Erlang systems that stand up to unpredictable real-world usage.