Menu
I don't think I understand testing as well a should. I have written a lot of tests and gotten decent coverage but I cannot help feeling it has not been intuitive.
Let me explain: if I have a class the I am testing a method and it needs to be passed a big object of some sort, with all kinds of state. This object in turn contains other objects and their states that I know nothing of, how do I create mock or stub objects for this method and give it data that it can work with. It seems I have to create a big object with all kinds of internal sub object information to exercise my method. I'm clearly confused!
734
Can You Use Mock Objects? Of course, before you can use mock objects, you need an application that supports mocking: a loosely coupled architecture that lets you insert a mock object to replace a real object/dependency. Some form of dependency injection facilitates this, as do most design patterns.
A MockSettings object is instantiated by a factory method as follows: That setting object will be used in the creation of a new mock: Similar to the preceding section, we will invoke the add method of a MyList instance and verify that a mock method with a MockSettings argument works as it is meant to by using the following code snippet:
A MockSettings object is instantiated by a factory method as follows: MockSettings customSettings = withSettings ().defaultAnswer (new CustomAnswer ()); That setting object will be used in the creation of a new mock: MyList listMock = mock (MyList.class, customSettings);
Mocks – Loosely speaking, the term is used in this article to mean anything that isn’t real data or objects. Real (.*) – Fragments that return real data in the system. Admittedly, I caught myself doing what I’m about to call out (but corrected myself swiftly).
The other answers here are pointing you to mocking frameworks, which you should definitely look at if you're not already using (use Mockito!). However, this is almost certainly an instance of your tests telling you that you've got design problems. If you find yourself having to provide all kinds of unrelated information and mock objects just to make a test pass, then you're
These are all symptoms of a system not designed for testability, which almost universally equates to a system not designed for readability, meaning it's not designed well.
If you care about testing well, embrace test-first thinking and TDD. I highly recommend a couple of books on the subject: "xUnit Test Patterns", which I've read and reviewed, and "Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests", which I'm almost finished reading.
199
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With
