An Introduction to JUnit

Animesh Kumar
 Toyota

http://blog.crisp.se/henrikkniberg/2010/03/16/1268757660000.h
tml

Toyota’s Prius example

A defect found in the production phase is about 50
times more expensive than if it is found during
prototyping. If the defect is found after production it
will be about 1,000 – 10,000 times more expensive

Reality turned out to be worse, a lot worse! Toyota’s problems with the Prius braking
systems is costing them over $2 000 000 000 (2 billion!) to fix because of all the recalls and
lost sales. “Toyota announced that a glitch with the software program that controls the
vehicle's anti-lock braking system was to blame".

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 Why write tests?

 Write a lot of code, and one day something will stop working!
 Fixing a bug is easy, but how about pinning it down?
 You never know where the ripples of your fixes can go.
 Are you sure the demon is dead?

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 Test Driven Development

An evolutionary approach to development where first you write a

Test and then add Functionality to pass the test.

Image courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development

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 What is Unit Testing?

 A Unit Test is a procedure to validate a single Functionality of

an application.

One Functionality  One Unit Test

 Unit Tests are automated and self-checked.

 They run in isolation of each other.
 They do NOT depend on or connect to external resources, like
DB, Network etc.
 They can run in any order and even parallel to each other and
that will be fine.

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 What do we get?

Obviously, we get tests to validate the functionalities, but that’s not

all…

 One part of the program is isolated from others, i.e. proper

separation of concerns.
 An ecology to foster Interface/Contract approached
programming.
 Interfaces are documented.
 Refactoring made smooth like butter lathered floor.
 Quick bug identification.

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 JUnit – An introduction

 JUnit is a unit testing framework for the java programming

language.
 It comes from the family of unit testing frameworks, collectively
called xUnit, where ‘x’ stands for the programming language,
e.g. CPPUnit, JSUnit, PHPUnit, PyUnit, RUnit etc.

Kent Beck and Erich Gamma originally wrote

this framework for ‘smalltalk’, and it was called
SUnit. Later it rippled into other languages.

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 Why choose JUnit?

Of course there are many tools like JUnit, but none like it.

 JUnit is simple and elegant.

 JUnit checks its own results and provide immediate
customized feedback.
 JUnit is hierarchal.
 JUnit has the widest IDE support, Eclipse, NetBeans, IntelliJ
IDEA … you name it.
 JUnit is recognized by popular build tools like, ant, maven etc.
 And… it’s free. 

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 Design of JUnit

 junit.framework.TestCase is the abstract command class which

you subclass into your Test Classes.
 junit.framework.TestSuite is a composite of other tests, either
TestCase or TestSuite. This behavior helps you create hierarchal
tests with depth control.

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 Design of JUnit

Image Courtesy: JUnit: A Cook’s Tour

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 Write a test case

 Define a subclass of junit.framework.TestCase

public class CalculatorTest extends TestCase {
}

 Define one or more testXXX() methods that can perform the

tests and assert expected results.
public void testAddition () {
Calculator calc = new Calculator();
int expected = 25;
int result = calc.add (10, 15);
assertEquals (result, expected); // asserting
}

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 Write a test case

 Override setUp() method to perform initialization.

@Override
protected void setUp () {
// Initialize anything, like
calc = new Calculator();
}
 Override tearDown() method to clean up.
@Override
protected void tearDown () {
// Clean up, like
calc = null;
}

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 Asserting expectations

 assertEquals (expected, actual)

 assertEquals (message, expected, actual)
 assertEquals (expected, actual, delta)
 assertEquals (message, expected, actual, delta)
 assertFalse ((message)condition)
 Assert(Not)Null (object)
 Assert(Not)Null (message, object)
 Assert(Not)Same (expected, actual)
 Assert(Not)Same (message, expected, actual)
 assertTrue ((message), condition)

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 Failure?

 JUnit uses the term failure for a test that fails expectedly.
That is
 An assertion was not valid or
 A fail() was encountered.

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 Write a test case

public class CalculatorTest extends TestCase {

// initialize
protected void setUp ()... S

public void testAddition ()... T1

public void testSubtraction ()... T2
public void testMultiplication ()... T3
// clean up
protected void tearDownUp ()... C
}

Execution will be S T1 C, S T2 C, S T3 C in any order.

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 Write a test suite

Write a class with a static method suite() that creates a

junit.framework.TestSuite containing all the Tests.

public class AllTests {

public static Test suite() {
TestSuite suite = new TestSuite();
suite.addTestSuite(<test-1>.class);
suite.addTestSuite(<test-2>.class);
return suite;
}
}

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 Run your tests

 You can either run TestCase or TestSuite instances.

 A TestSuite will automatically run all its registered TestCase
instances.
 All public testXXX() methods of a TestCase will be executed.
But there is no guarantee of the order.

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 Run your tests

 JUnit comes with TestRunners that run your tests and

immediately provide you with feedbacks, errors, and status of
completion.
 JUnit has Textual and Graphical test runners.

 Textual Runner
>> java junit.textui.TestRunner AllTests
or,
junit.textui.TestRunner.run(AllTests.class);

 Graphical Runner
>> java junit.swingui.TestRunner AllTests
or,
junit.swingui.TestRunner.run(AllTests.class);

 IDE like Eclipse, NetBeans “Run as JUnit”

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 Test maintenance

 Create 2 separate directories for source and test codes.

 Mirror source package structure into test.
 Define a TestSuite for each java package that would contain all
TestCase instances for this package. This will create a hierarchy
of Tests.

> com -
> impetus - AllTests
> Book - BookTests
. AddBook - AddBookTest
. DeleteBook - DeleteBookTest
. ListBooks - ListBooksTest
> Library - LibraryTests
> User - UserTests

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 Mocks

 Mocking is a way to deal with third-party dependencies inside

TestCase.
 Mocks create FAKE objects to mock a contract behavior.
 Mocks help make tests more unitary.

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 EasyMock

 EasyMock is an open-source java library to help you create

Mock Objects.
 Flow: Expect => Replay => Verify
userService = EasyMock.createMock(IUserService.class); 1
User user = ... //
EasyMock
.expect (userService.isRegisteredUser(user)) 2
.andReturn (true); 3
EasyMock.replay(userService); 4
assertTrue(userService.isRegisteredUser(user)); 5

 Modes: Strict and Nice

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 JUnit and Eclipse

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 JUnit and build tools

 Apache Maven
 > mvn test
 > mvn -Dtest=MyTestCase,MyOtherTestCase test
 Apache Ant
<junit printsummary="yes" haltonfailure="yes">
<test name="my.test.TestCase"/>
</junit>

<junit printsummary="yes" haltonfailure="yes">

<batchtest fork="yes" todir="${reports.tests}">
<fileset dir="${src.tests}">
<include name="**/*Test*.java"/>
<exclude name="**/AllTests.java"/>
</fileset>
</batchtest>
</junit>

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 Side effects – good or bad?

 Designed to call methods.

 This works great for methods that just return results
 Methods that change the state of the object could turn out to be tricky to
test
 Difficult to unit test GUI code
 Encourages “functional” style of coding
 This can be a good thing

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 How to approach?

 Test a little, Code a little, Test a little, Code a little … doesn’t it

rhyme? ;)
 Write tests to validate functionality, not functions.
 If tempted to write System.out.println() to debug something,
better write a test for it.
 If a bug is found, write a test to expose the bug.

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 Resources

 Book: Manning: JUnit in Action

 http://www.junit.org/index.htm
 http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~eclipse/10-JUnit.pdf
 http://supportweb.cs.bham.ac.uk/documentation/tutorials/docsy
stem/build/tutorials/junit/junit.pdf

 http://junit.sourceforge.net/javadoc/junit/framework/

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