FND-CSC-Test driven development

Unit Testing Best Practice

 

Keywords:  Unit testing and Test Driven Development

 

 

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Abstract

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This unit ...

Prerequisites

You need to complete the following units before beginning this one:

• FND-CSC-Software_development (Software Development for Research Labs)

 

Objectives

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Outcomes

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Deliverables

• Time management: Before you begin, estimate how long it will take you to complete this unit. Then, record in your course journal: the number of hours you estimated, the number of hours you worked on the unit, and the amount of time that passed between start and completion of this unit.
• Journal: Document your progress in your Course Journal. Some tasks may ask you to include specific items in your journal. Don't overlook these.
• Insights: If you find something particularly noteworthy about this unit, make a note in your insights! page.

 

Evaluation

Evaluation: NA

This unit is not evaluated for course marks.

 

Contents

Test Driven Development

TDD is meant to ensure that code actually does what it is meant to do. In practice, we define our software goals and devise a test (or battery of tests) for each. Initially, all tests fail. As we develop, the tests succeed. As we continue development

• we think carefully about how to break the project into components and structure them (units). These more or less do one thing, one thing only, and don't have side-effects;
• we discipline ourselves to watch out for unexpected input, edge- and corner cases and unwarranted assumptions;
• we can be confident that later changes do not break what we have done earlier - because our tests keep track of the behaviour.

 

Typically testing is done at several levels:

• During the initial development phases unit testing continuously checks the function of the software units of the system.
• As the code base progresses, code units are integrated and begin interacting via their interfaces - we begin integration testing. Interfaces can be specified as "contracts" that define the conditions and obligations of an interaction. Typically, a contract will define the precondition, postcondition and invariants of an interaction. Focussing on these aspects of system behaviour is also called design by contract. The primary task of integration testing is to verify that contracts are accurately and completely fulfilled.
• Finally validation tests verify the code, and validate its correct execution - just like a positive control in a lab experiment.
• However: Code may be correct, but still unusable in practice. Without performance testing the development cannot be considered to be complete.

Testing supports maintenance. When you find a bug, write a test that fails because of the bug, then fix the bug, and with great satisfaction watch your test pass. Also, be mindful that you may have made the same type of error elsewhere in your code. Search for these cases, write tests and fix them too.

That said, one of the strongest points of TDD is that it supports refactoring! Work in a cycle: Write tests → Develop → Refactor. This allows you to get something working quickly, then adopting more elegant / efficient / maintainable solutions that do not break functionality.

 

 

Further reading, links and resources

 

Notes

 

Self-evaluation

 

 

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If in doubt, ask! If anything about this learning unit is not clear to you, do not proceed blindly but ask for clarification. Post your question on the course mailing list: others are likely to have similar problems. Or send an email to your instructor.

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About ...
 
Author:

Boris Steipe <boris.steipe@utoronto.ca>

Created:

2017-08-05

Modified:

2017-08-05

Version:

0.1

Version history:

• 0.1 First stub

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