Unit Test Frameworks [With CDROM]

by Paul Hamill

Unit test frameworks are a key element of popular development methodologies such as eXtreme Programming (XP) and Agile Development. But unit testing has moved far beyond eXtreme Programming; it is now... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0596006896
• ISBN13: 9780596006891
• Release Date: December 2004
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Length: 198 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 7.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Great intro and overview if that's what you're looking for

I had used JUnit for several years before picking up this book and I like to think that I know the tool pretty well. So why did I decide to read this book? I read this book because I thought that might help me venture a bit outside my familiar JUnit turf and into doing test-first programming with languages other than Java. The short version? A very nice introduction to all the included xUnit ports. The long version? Read on. The first four chapters are general introduction to the topic of unit testing (and to some degree, test-driven development). I was prepared to do a quick scan through them all but ended up reading chapters 3 (xUnit architecture) and 4 (writing unit tests) almost word to word-the topic was mostly familiar but the authors solid writing kind of kept me going. The first two chapters didn't pique my interest that much, perhaps because I had already seen people develop a unit test framework from scratch as an introduction to the domain. The real meat of the book that I was looking forward to was in chapters 7 through 9, the introductions to CppUnit, NUnit, PyUnit-which were mostly new to me although I had done very little fooling around with them before. I wasn't disappointed. The author managed to put together a pretty good set of tutorials for these frameworks. Obviously the same information is available online but I still prefer reading a treekiller rather than a printout of a web page. The not so bright spots in the book, in my opinion, were the chapters on unit testing a Swing GUI and on XMLUnit. Not that they were in anyway badly written. I just felt like they didn't belong. I would've personally swapped in a couple of additional xUnit ports instead (Ruby and PHP, for example). This is definitely not a book you'll carry with you from project to project. There's approximately 100 pages of substance split among half a dozen topics so none of them gets covered in detail. The rest, almost 100 pages of the book is what I'd classify as "nice to have"-I don't mind having that material in the book but I also wouldn't have minded if they'd left them out. To summarize, if you'd like to get an idea of how the unit testing frameworks on different platforms/languages differ and what they have in common, this is as good an introduction to them as any and well written in all dimensions. However, you might be disappointed if you're looking for a more long-lasting companion.

Excellent book, explains the core of testing frameworks

I have been using JUnit for unit testing on Java for quite a while and I have also been exposed to other testing frameworks, but had never looked under the hood is such detail as Paul does in this book. He starts with a good overview of what a unit test framework and then takes us to a very nice tutorial on building your own unit test framework from scratch. This exercise is very well documented and you learn the basic principles behind a unit test framework while building a simple application and the unit tests required to test it. After laying out the foundation, he goes on to explain in more detail how to write unit tests, how to use assertions, how to deal and test exceptions and expected errors, how to test protected behavior, how to organize your project for testing and using more advanced techniques like mock objects and performance testing. He also includes a chapter that deals with testing GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces) which is a challenging task, but he offers good ideas for doing test driven development for a GUI to the application that we have been building during the previous chapters. After all the basic concepts have been covered, the next chapters are dedicated to the most important (or more popular) unit test frameworks which are JUnit for Java, CppUnit for C++, NUnit for C# on .NET, PyUnit for Python and XMLUnit for XML documents. It is interesting to note that throughout the book the author uses the same application for the example code, so that we can compare the actual implementation of the tests using the different frameworks. In the appendices, there is a C++ version of the simple Java framework that was built on chapter 2 and there are also summaries of the class reference documentation for JUnit and CppUnit. Overall I think it is a very solid book with good examples and very concise content. Even though it doesn't cover all the unit test frameworks that exist today, I think it covers the most important ones, but the real gem is on the in-depth analysis of what makes a unit test framework. If you are already familiar with one or more unit test frameworks, this book will give you a deeper understanding of them, and if you are still programming without writing unit tests... shame on you ;-)... buy this book and learn how simple it is to have a very good unit testing framework, no matter what language you use.

A keeper

This is a very solid, no-nonsense introduction to unit test framework. For a 200 page book, this one is packed with carefully chosen information, detailed enough for new comers to start unit testing, useful enough for a frequently-visited reference, and at the same time concise enough for anyone to get an overview of the unit test landscape.

A really useful book

I have put off writing a review of this book because I had very mixed feelings. On the plus side, it is a very clear concise guide to unit testing - a great introduction. On the negative side, I figured that any decent programmer already knows what's covered here. Even those who don't write unit tests (bad programmer, bad) knows what they are and how to do it. Then I was stuck on how to unit test in a particular case and the author email me - look on page 37. And there it was. So, if you are learning to program - GET THIS BOOK. No one will hire you unless you know this. If you're an experienced programmer, it can still teach you a thing or two. - dave thielen ps - the author is a friend of mine and that did cause me to round up my 4.5 rating.

A must for test-first programmers

One of the major pushes in any agile methodology is that of test-first programming. Test first programming requires the developer to write a programmatic unit test to test the functionality being created. Unit Test frameworks have appeared to aid developers in this regard. Basically, unit test frameworks allow programmers to create tests-written in their language of choice-for the piece of functionality created. While test first programming might sound a bit backwards or like an added expense in an already busy project plan, it is in fact a priceless tool in quickly developing quality code. This book outlines the major unit test frameworks available as well as how to go about using one of them. Creating a unit test requires developers to think about their programming in a slightly different light. This book does an excellent job in explaining what a unit test is, how to write it, and how to test what you really want to test. The book then goes in depth to discuss the specific various frameworks, including JUnit, CppUnit, and NUnit (to name only a few). While giving some excellent instruction, this book also manages to include some good architecture lessons. In one such example, the author discusses the disadvantage of tying UI to code and how that makes unit tests much more complicated to write and maintain. I was quite pleased with this book, and I would highly recommend it to any programmer. Writing unit tests for your code during development will radically change how you program-for the better.