Unit Test Frameworks
Paul Hamill
Beijing Cambridge Farnham Kln Sebastopol Tokyo
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Preface
This book presents a comprehensive review of the xUnit family of unittest frameworks, including their usage, architecture, and theory. Webegin by building a simple unit test framework from the ground up.The xUnit architecture is presented, using theJUnit framework as thereference implementation of xUnit. We progressively build an exampleapplication to demonstrate common practices and patterns of unit testdevelopment. Several popular versions of xUnit, including JUnit,CppUnit, NUnit, PyUnit, and XMLUnit, are covered in detail. Detailedclass references are provided for JUnit and CppUnit as appendixes.
As a software development methodology, unit testing incorporates manyrules and guidelines. However, writing unit tests is an art, not ascience. Once you are familiar with the unit test driven approach todevelopment, rigidly following its rules is optional. The true valueof unit testing is in the focus on low-level software quality itgives developers, rather than as a formal process.
Audience
This book is intended for software developers, technical managers,and quality assurance staff who are learning about unit testing andagiledevelopment. Agile development is the wave of the future in softwareengineering, and many technical organizations are adopting it. Usingunit test frameworks to enable test driven development is a key tobecoming agile.
Contents of This Book
Here is a summary of the topics covered in each chapter and appendix:
An overview that explains what unit test frameworks are and how theyare used.
A tutorial that creates a simple Java test framework. This providesthe fundamentals of how unit test frameworks work. Appendix Acontains the C++ version of this simple framework tutorial.
A review of xUnit, using JUnit as a reference implementation todemonstrate basic xUnit architecture and usage.
An overview of writing unit tests. This offers a more detaileddiscussion of different types of unit tests and patterns of unit testdevelopment.
A discussion of unit testing of GUI applications. This chapterexplains how to build and test GUI objects following the smart objectmodel.
A description of the details of the usage and architecture of JUnitfor Java.
A description of the details of the usage and architecture of CppUnitfor C++.
A description of the details of the usage and architecture for NUnitfor .NET.
A description of the details of the usage and architecture of PyUnitfor Python.
A description of the details of the usage and architecture of XMLUnitfor XML.
A list of additional resources for unit test frameworks and relatedtopics.
The C++ version of the simple unit test framework from .
A detailed class reference for JUnits key packagejunit.framework.
A detailed class reference for CppUnit.
Glossary
A list of definitions for important technical terms used in this book.
Conventions Used in This Book
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Code in this book is formatted as shown here to distinguish it fromthe rest of the text. Code examples begin with the filename where thecode resides.
MyClass.java public class
MyClass { myMethod( ) { int id = 3; }}
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Acknowledgments
My sincere thanks go out to my reviewers: Ron Jeffries, JamesNewkirk, Philip Plumlee, J. B. Rainsberger, Simon Robbie, and AnthonyWilliams. Their shared experience and advice was incredibly usefuland encouraging. This book could not have been completed withouttheir help.
This book is built on the work of software pioneers. Kent Beck is theoriginal author of the xUnit architecture in the form ofSmalltalkUnit. Ward Cunningham, Kent Beck, and Ron Jeffriesare the formulators of the Extreme Programming methodology, which ledto many of the test driven development practices described in thisbook. Erich Gamma and Kent Beck ported SmalltalkUnitto Java to createJUnit, the most widelyused and extended unit test framework. Many individual developerscreated and contributed to the different versions of xUnit, which areclassic examples of open source software, built by the collectiveefforts of the software development community. The fingerprints ofthese talented engineers are all over the material covered by thisbook.