Lab 4 — Testing, Front-end, and AI Agents

Note

The lab will be modified throughout the course.

Sync your cloned repo with the upstream from time to time.

Table of contents

• Lab story
• Learning advice
• Learning outcomes
• Tasks
  • Prerequisites
  • Required
  • Optional

Lab story

You are on the back-end team for the Learning Management Service.

The API is deployed and secured. Now the team wants to prove it works with real tests, add a front-end so users can interact with the data, and establish the habit of using AI agents as development tools.

A senior engineer explains your next assignment:

1. Redeploy the back-end and observe how requests flow from Swagger UI through the API to the database.
2. Write unit and end-to-end tests, discover existing bugs, and fix them.
3. Add a front-end to the system and modify it using an AI coding agent.

Important

Communicate through issues and PRs and deliver a working deployment.

Learning advice

Read the tasks and complete them by yourself.

When stuck or not sure, ask the AI coding agent.

Use appropriate prompts.

Remember: Use the LLM to enhance your understanding, not replace it.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this lab, you should be able to:

• Deploy a back-end service to a remote VM.
• Use browser developer tools to inspect HTTP requests.
• Examine the request path from Swagger UI through the API to the database.
• Construct unit and end-to-end tests for boundary-value cases.
• Diagnose bugs from failing test output and apply fixes.
• Use an AI coding agent to generate and refine tests.
• Differentiate between a dev server and production static files.
• Use an AI coding agent to modify front-end code and observe the result.

In simple words, you should be able to say:

1. I redeployed the system and observed requests flowing from Swagger to the API to the database!
2. I wrote tests, found bugs, and fixed them!
3. I added a front-end and modified it using an AI coding agent!

Tasks

Prerequisites

1. Complete the lab setup

Required

1. Observe the interaction of the system components
2. Back-end testing
3. Add frontend

Optional

1. Set up CI/CD with GitHub Actions