Skip to main content

TDD

Test Driven Development

  • The importance of writing tests
    • They force the developer to think of the class design
    • They provide a safety harness while refactoring
    • They ensure that the state of code is always stable
    • New developers can make changes comfortable with the knowledge that if they break something that was working, the tests will inform them
    • Test after development is not the same as test first development. Test after development does not reap all the benefits of test first development
  • Writing the tests
    • Think about the class it’s responsibilities and it’s API
    • Write the tests to test every method and various conditions in the methods
    • Whenever you think of writing a print statement or generate a log, it might be a scenario to include a test
    • Write enough production code to ensure that the tests compile and fail
    • Write production code to pass all tests one by one, while also ensuring that previous tests do not fail
  • What not to test
    • Database entities need not be tested
    • Do not go overboard with tests. First write tests that are most likely to fail. Think of the cost benefit ratio while writing tests
  • The test class
    • Tests classes end with the work Test. The test class for Account will be AccountTest
    • Test methods begin with the word test. The test method for creditAccount() will be testcreditAccount()
    • Tests can either exist in a different source tree in the same package as the class they are testing, or in the same source tree, but in a different package.
  • Managing dependencies
    • Unit tests should ideally not have any dependencies
    • Dependencies can be eliminated with mock objects (so that units can be tested in isolation)
  • AllTests
    • There should have one class AllTests that will run the entire test suite

    Requirements (Java Unit Tests):

    • JUnit 3.8 for JDK 1.4 and before
    • JUnit 4.x for JDK 1.5 and after
    • StrutsTestCase for testing Struts Action classes

    References:



Notes: This text was originally posted on my earlier blog at http://www.adaptivelearningonline.net
Labels:

Comments

Aditi said…
Very nice insight on TDD.
11:12 AM
Parag said…
Thanks Aditi
11:54 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My HSQLDB schema inspection story

This is a simple story of my need to inspect the schema of an HSQLDB database for a participar FOREIGN KEY, and the interesting things I had to do to actually inspect it. I am using an HSQLDB 1.8 database in one of my web applications. The application has been developed using the Play framework , which by default uses JPA and Hibernate . A few days back, I wanted to inspect the schema which Hibernate had created for one of my model objects. I started the HSQLDB database on my local machine, and then started the database manager with the following command java -cp ./hsqldb-1.8.0.7.jar org.hsqldb.util.DatabaseManagerSwing When I tried the view the schema of my table, it showed me the columns and column types on that table, but it did not show me columns were FOREIGN KEYs. Image 1: Table schema as shown by HSQLDB's database manager I decided to search on StackOverflow and find out how I could view the full schema of the table in question. I got a few hints, and they all pointed to
Post a Comment
Read more

Fuctional Programming Principles in Scala - Getting Started

Sometime back I registered for the Functional Programming Principles in Scala , on Coursera. I have been meaning to learn Scala from a while, but have been putting it on the back burner because of other commitments. But  when I saw this course being offered by Martin Odersky, on Coursera , I just had to enroll in it. This course is a 7 week course. I will blog my learning experience and notes here for the next seven weeks (well actually six, since the course started on Sept 18th). The first step was to install the required tools: JDK - Since this is my work machine, I already have a couple of JDK's installed SBT - SBT is the Scala Build Tool. Even though I have not looked into it in detail, it seems like a replacement for Maven. I am sure we will use it for several things, however upto now I only know about two uses for it - to submit assignments (which must be a feature added by the course team), and to start the Scala console. Installed sbt from here , and added the path
1 comment
Read more

Five Reasons Why Your Product Needs an Awesome User Guide

Photo Credit: Peter Merholz ( Creative Commons 2.0 SA License ) A user guide is essentially a book-length document containing instructions for installing, using or troubleshooting a hardware or software product. A user guide can be very brief - for example, only 10 or 20 pages or it can be a full-length book of 200 pages or more. -- prismnet.com As engineers, we give a lot of importance to product design, architecture, code quality, and UX. However, when it comes to the user manual, we often only manage to pay lip service. This is not good. A usable manual is as important as usable software because it is the first line of help for the user and the first line of customer service for the organization. Any organization that prides itself on great customer service must have an awesome user manual for the product. In the spirit of listicles - here are at least five reasons why you should have an awesome user manual! Enhance User Satisfaction In my fourteen years as a
Post a Comment
Read more