Shadowfirebird wrote:
I've found this lovely bit of example code for mocha, though -- see
below. If I understand you correctly, you seem to be saying that you
*don't* test the output routine; you use a mock to fake it so that you
can test the rest of the code?
Consider a test T that calls A, which calls B.
Sometimes, a B is cheap to assemble, so T can assemble B, activate A, and test that A did its thing. T considers B's behavior just a side-effect.
Most of the time, B should be real. And its state should be static (such as a Rails "fixture", with static data.) B should not have runaway dependencies. The test T should be easy to set-up.
You should mock B if it's too expensive to set up. For example, if B reads the system clock, and if T would prefer the date is 2008 July 31, the test T should not wait an infinite amount of time, until the cosmos oscillates and 2008 July 31 occurs again. Tests should run as fast as possible, to avoid any hesitation running them.
You should mock B, so it behaves as if the date is correct. Or you should mock (in Ruby) Time.now, so all Ruby methods that use the date will read the mocked date.
Other examples of things too expensive to directly test:
- live users
- random numbers
- hardware - networks, robots, tape drives, the clock, etc
- system errors
If your B object is not on the list, you should not mock it. Unit tests work best when they cross-test everything. The only thing better than a test that fails because A broke is many tests that all accurately fail because B broke. If your B is too expensive to assemble, you should refactor it, so it bypasses the behavior that T and A did not care about.
class Enterprise
def initialize(dilithium); @dilithium = dilithium; end
def go(warp_factor); warp_factor.times { @dilithium.nuke(:anti_matter) }; end
end
Very nice. And note it obeys my list, by mocking both hardware and space-time distortions.
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Phlip