I just read the Wikipedia article on mock objects, but I'm still not entirely clear on their purpose. It appears they are objects that are created by a test framework when the actual object would be too complex or unpredictable (you know 100% sure what the values of the mock object are because you fully control them).
However, I was under the impression that all testing is done with objects of known values, so I must be missing something. For example, in a course project, we were tasked with a calendar application. Our test suite consisted of event objects that we knew exactly what they were so we could test the interactions between multiple event objects, various subsystems, and the user interface. I'm guessing these are mock objects, but I don't know why you wouldn't do this because without the objects of known values, you can't test a system.
A mock object is not just an object with known values. It is an object that has the same interface as a complex object that you cannot use in test (like a database connection and result sets), but with an implementation that you can control in your test.
There are mocking frameworks that allow you to create these objects on the fly and in essence allow you to say something like: Make me an object with a method foo that takes an int and returns a bool. When I pass 0, it should return true. Then you can test the code that uses foo(), to make sure it reacts appropriately.
Martin Fowler has a great article on mocking:
http://martinfowler.com/articles/mocksArentStubs.html
Think of the classic case of having client and server software. To test the client, you need the server; to test the server, you need the client. This makes unit testing pretty much impossible - without using mocks. If you mock the server, you can test the client in isolation and vice versa.
The point of the mock is not to duplicate the behaviour of the things its mocking though. It is more to act as a simple state machine whose state changes can be analysed by the test framework. So a client mock might generate test data, send it to the server and then analyse the response. You expect a certain response to a specific request, and so you can test if you get it.
I agree with everything #Lou Franco says and you should definitely read the excellent Martin Fowler article on test doubles that #Lou Franco points you to.
The main purpose of any test double (fake, stub or mock) is to isolate the object under test so that your unit test is only testing that object (not its dependencies and the other types it collaborates or interacts with).
An object that provides the interface that your object is dependent on can be used in place of the actual dependency so that expectations can be placed that certain interactions will occur. This can be useful but there is some controversy around state-based vs. interaction-based testing. Overuse of mock expectation will lead to brittle tests.
A further reason for test doubles is to remove dependencies on databases or file systems or other types that are expensive to set up or perform time consuming operations. This means you can keep the time required to unit test the object you're interested in to a minimum.
Here's an example: if you're writing code that populates a database you may want to check if a particular method has added data to the database.
Setting up a copy of the database for testing has the problem that if you assume there are no records before the call to the tested method and one record after, then you need to roll back the database to a previous state, thus adding to the overhead for running the test.
If you assume there is only one more record than before, it may clash with a second tester (or even a second test in the same code) connecting to the same database, thus causing dependencies and making the tests fragile.
The mock allows you to keep the tests independent of each other and easy to set up.
This is just one example - I'm sure others can supply more.
I agree 100% with the other contributors on this topic, especially with the recommendation for the Martin Fowler article.
You might be interested in our book, see http://www.growing-object-oriented-software.com/. It's in Java, but the ideas still apply.
Related
I've had a certain feeling these last couple of days that dependency-injection should really be called "I can't make up my mind"-pattern. I know this might sound silly, but really it's about the reasoning behind why I should use Dependency Injection (DI). Often it is said that I should use DI, to achieve a higher level of loose-coupling, and I get that part. But really... how often do I change my database, once my choice has fallen on MS SQL or MySQL .. Very rarely right?
Does anyone have some very compelling reasons why DI is the way to go?
Two words, unit testing.
One of the most compelling reasons for DI is to allow easier unit testing without having to hit a database and worry about setting up 'test' data.
DI is very useful for decoupling your system. If all you're using it for is to decouple the database implementation from the rest of your application, then either your application is pretty simple or you need to do a lot more analysis on the problem domain and discover what components within your problem domain are the most likely to change and the components within your system that have a large amount of coupling.
DI is most useful when you're aiming for code reuse, versatility and robustness to changes in your problem domain.
How relevant it is to your project depends upon the expected lifespan of your code. Depending on the type of work you're doing zero reuse from one project to the next for the majority of code you're writing might actually be quite acceptable.
An example for use the use of DI is in creating an application that can be deployed for several clients using DI to inject customisations for the client, which could also be described as the GOF Strategy pattern. Many of the GOF patterns can be facilitated with the use of a DI framework.
DI is more relevant to Enterprise application development in which you have a large amount of code, complicated business requirements and an expectation (or hope) that the system will be maintained for many years or decades.
Even if you don't change the structure of your program during development phases you will find out you need to access several subsystems from different parts of your program. With DI each of your classes just needs to ask for services and you're free of having to provide all the wiring manually.
This really helps me on concentrating on the interaction of things in the software design and not on "who needs to carry what around because someone else needs it later".
Additionally it also just saves a LOT of work writing boilerplate code. Do I need a singleton? I just configure a class to be one. Can I test with such a "singleton"? Yes, I still can (since I just CONFIGURED it to exist only once, but the test can instantiate an alternative implementation).
But, by the way before I was using DI I didn't really understand its worth, but trying it was a real eye-opener to me: My designs are a lot more object-oriented as they have been before.
By the way, with the current application I DON'T unit-test (bad, bad me) but I STILL couldn't live with DI anymore. It is so much easier moving things around and keeping classes small and simple.
While I semi-agree with you with the DB example, one of the large things that I found helpful to use DI is to help me test the layer I build on top of the database.
Here's an example...
You have your database.
You have your code that accesses the database and returns objects
You have business domain objects that take the previous item's objects and do some logic with them.
If you merge the data access with your business domain logic, your domain objects can become difficult to test. DI allows you to inject your own data access objects into your domain so that you don't depend on the database for testing or possibly demonstrations (ran a demo where some data was pulled in from xml instead of a database).
Abstracting 3rd party components and frameworks like this would also help you.
Aside from the testing example, there's a few places where DI can be used through a Design by Contract approach. You may find it appropriate to create a processing engine of sorts that calls methods of the objects you're injecting into it. While it may not truly "process it" it runs the methods that have different implementation in each object you provide.
I saw an example of this where the every business domain object had a "Save" function that the was called after it was injected into the processor. The processor modified the component with configuration information and Save handled the object's primary state. In essence, DI supplemented the polymorphic method implementation of the objects that conformed to the Interface.
Dependency Injection gives you the ability to test specific units of code in isolation.
Say I have a class Foo for example that takes an instance of a class Bar in its constructor. One of the methods on Foo might check that a Property value of Bar is one which allows some other processing of Bar to take place.
public class Foo
{
private Bar _bar;
public Foo(Bar bar)
{
_bar = bar;
}
public bool IsPropertyOfBarValid()
{
return _bar.SomeProperty == PropertyEnum.ValidProperty;
}
}
Now let's say that Bar is instantiated and it's Properties are set to data from some datasource in it's constructor. How might I go about testing the IsPropertyOfBarValid() method of Foo (ignoring the fact that this is an incredibly simple example)? Well, Foo is dependent on the instance of Bar passed in to the constructor, which in turn is dependent on the data from the datasource that it's properties are set to. What we would like to do is have some way of isolating Foo from the resources it depends upon so that we can test it in isolation
This is where Dependency Injection comes in. What we want is to have some way of faking an instance of Bar passed to Foo such that we can control the properties set on this fake Bar and achieve what we set out to do, test that the implementation of IsPropertyOfBarValid() does what we expect it to do, i.e. return true when Bar.SomeProperty == PropertyEnum.ValidProperty and false for any other value.
There are two types of fake object, Mocks and Stubs. Stubs provide input for the application under test so that the test can be performed on something else. Mocks on the other hand provide input to the test to decide on pass\fail.
Martin Fowler has a great article on the difference between Mocks and Stubs
I think that DI is worth using when you have many services/components whose implementations must be selected at runtime based on external configuration. (Note that such configuration can take the form of an XML file or a combination of code annotations and separate classes; choose what is more convenient.)
Otherwise, I would simply use a ServiceLocator, which is much "lighter" and easier to understand than a whole DI framework.
For unit testing, I prefer to use a mocking API that can mock objects on demand, instead of requiring them to be "injected" into the tested unit from a test. For Java, one such library is my own, JMockit.
Aside from loose coupling, testing of any type is achieved with much greater ease thanks to DI. You can put replace an existing dependency of a class under test with a mock, a dummy or even another version. If a class is created with its dependencies directly instantiated it can often be difficult or even impossible to "stub" them out if required.
I just understood tonight.
For me, dependancy injection is a method for instantiate objects which require a lot of parameters to work in a specific context.
When should you use dependancy injection?
You can use dependancy injection if you instanciate in a static way an object. For example, if you use a class which can convert objects into XML file or JSON file and if you need only the XML file. You will have to instanciate the object and configure a lot of thing if you don't use dependancy injection.
When should you not use depandancy injection?
If an object is instanciated with request parameters (after a submission form), you should not use depandancy injection because the object is not instanciated in a static way.
Suppose I was writing a clone of the game 2048 (http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/2048/) and I want to write a test to verify that "the right thing" happens when the game is "won". Suppose that my game state is encapsulated in a class and that the state itself is private.
I suppose that I could write code to play the game, evaluate through the public interface when I'm about to win and then make the winning move; however, this seems like overkill. I would instead like to set a game state, make the winning move and verify that the object behaves as expected.
What is the recommended way of designing such a test? My current thought is that the test should either be a public member function of the class or that the test infrastructure should be friended by the class. Both of these seem distasteful.
Edit: In response to the first question: I'm assuming in this example that I don't have a method to set the game state and that there's no reason to write one; therefore it would be adding additional functionality just to write a test... ...one that then requires another member function to test, a get game state function. So then I'm writing at least two more public methods and test just to write this one test. Worse, these are methods that essentially break encapsulation such that if the internal details change I have to change these two methods and their tests for no other reason than to have a test. This seems more distasteful than friending a test function.
First, remember that Test-Driven Development is a design-oriented methodology. The primary goal of the tests is to influence the design of the SUT and its collaborators; everything else is just along for the ride.
Second, TDD emphasizes small steps. In his book, Test-Driven Development: By Example, Kent Beck says:
If you have to spend a hundred lines creating the objects for one single assertion, then something is wrong. Your objects are too big and need to be split. (p. 194)
This means you should listen to your intuition about writing the code necessary to win the game being overkill.
You also said:
I would instead like to set a game state, make the winning move and verify that the object behaves as expected.
Which is exactly what you should do.
Why? Because you're testing end-game scenarios. Most/all of the details that led to the end-game are irrelevant - you just want to make sure the program does "the right thing... when the game is won." As such, these are the only details that are relevant to your tests.
So what are these details that are relevant to your tests? To figure them out, it helps to discuss things with a colleague.
Q: How does the test configure the system to indicate the game has been won - without actually playing the game?
A: Tell something that the game has been won.
Q: What object would the test tell that the game has been won?
A: I don't know. But to keep things simple, let's say it's some object serving the role of "Referee".
By asking these questions, we've teased out some details of the design. Specifically, we've identified a role which can be represented in OOP by an interface.
What might this "Referee" role look like? Perhaps:
(pseudocode)
begin interface Referee
method GameHasBeenWon returns boolean
end interface
The presence of an interface establishes a seam in the design, which allows tests to use test-doubles in place of production objects. Not only that, it allows the implementation of this functionality to change (e.g., a rule change affecting how a game is determined to be "won") without having to modify any of the surrounding code.
This ties in directly with something else you mentioned:
I'm assuming in this example that I don't have a method to set the game state and that there's no reason to write one; therefore it would be adding additional functionality just to write a test...
A test is a consumer of your code. If it is difficult for a test to interact with your code, then it will be even more difficult for production code (having many more constraints) to interact with it. This is what is meant by "Listening to your tests".
Note that there are a lot of possible designs that can fall out of TDD. Every developer is going to have their own preferences which will influence the look and feel of the architecture. The main takeaway is that TDD helps break your program up into many small pieces, which is one of the core tenets of object oriented design.
I have a factory class that creates an object based on a parameter it receives. The parameter is an identifier that tells it which object it should create.
Its first step is to use the data access layer to pull information for the object.
Its next step is to do some cleansing / transformations on the data.
Finally it creates the required object and returns it.
I want to ensure that the cleansing / transformation step went OK but the object that it returns does not expose any state so I'm not sure how to test it easily.
The data access layer and the database structure can't change because they have to work with legacy code.
I could test it further on in the system after the object gets used but that would lead to big tests that are hard to maintain.
I've also thought of exposing the state of the object, or putting the responsibility in another class and testing that, but both those options seem like I'm changing the system for testing.
Any thoughts on other ways to test something like this?
It sounds to me like you are trying to test too much within a unit test.
This is a symptom of your Unit trying to do too much.
You are trying to do three things here.
Get data from the data access layer.
Clean the data.
Build the object
To fix I would move each of these responsibility into their own units ( classes / methods ) as you have suggested. Then you can test each unit on its own.
You are hesitant to do this as you don't want to change the system for testing. However, the advantage of unit testing is that it highlights flaws in the design. Not only are you changing the system for testing, you are improving it and making it more granular and thus more maintainable and reusable.
Your factory object is trying to do too much here. I recommend refactoring your code to give the responsibility of cleansing the data to another object, and testing that object's behaviour.
I've also thought of exposing the state of the object, or putting the
responsibility in another class and testing that, but both those
options seem like I'm changing the system for testing.
That's right, you are changing the system for testing. And it's a good thing. This is an example of Test Driven Design driving out a better design exhibiting looser coupling and higher cohesion, by forcing you down the path of giving your classes fewer responsibilities. (Ideally, each class would only have just one responsibility.) That's one of the key benefits of TDD, so don't fight it.
I know two ways to achieve this:
- in Java, by using reflection.
- (and the best, IMO) programming focused on interfaces, so you can implement the interfaces whereby you can access the data.
Continuing another but similar question about testing (see here). I'll use a similare example (pseudocode)
class LinkDisplayer
method constructor(LinkStorage)
method displayLatestLinksByCategory(number_of_them)
class LinkStorage
method saveLink(Link)
method retrieveLatestLinksByCategory(category, number_of_them)
class Link
method getUrl()
method getDescription()
method getCategory()
So the linkDisplayer uses the LinkStorage to get Link(s). The behavior I want to test is 'shouldDisplayLatestLinks'. In my test, do I need to mock LinkStorage, and let it return mocked Link objects with mocked getUrl() etc behavior?
Testing 'leaf' classes is easy enough but I still find it very difficult to find my way in testing the other ones.
Short Answer:
You should be mocking/stubbing anything that is not under the direct control of your SUT. Only test the behavior of your SUT, and never write a test that attempts to confirm behavior that is outside that scope (ie. testing mocks/stubs).
Long Answer:
it can be difficult to see the forest for the trees. When you are the one who wrote all the code you can find it difficult sometimes to steer clear of testing too granular of an implementation detail.
You have the right idea with wanting to test behavior, and rightly so red flags went off when you started thinking about your test. This is exactly what TDD is all about, as it helps to expose design flaws. Just remember though, only test the behavior of the SUT. Everything else should be under the control of your unit test (mocks), otherwise it would not be a unit test.
Put yourself in the position of the consumer of the LinkDisplayer class, and ask yourself "How would I use this in production code?" You would probably just call the method and expect that it worked. You most certainly would not make a call to the database to ensure that it did in fact retrieve the correct number of elements, or that they were sorted by category would you? So why attempt to write a test for that.
What should the end result be of calling displayLatestLinksByCategory?
I see two possible answers to that question based on your sample, and what actions you should take based on those answers:
Get some stuff from the database using a specific method, and display it somewhere.
If this is what that method does, then those are the only two things you should be testing for. Mainly, that the right method was called on the data access component with the right arguments; and that the data returned got to where it needed to go.
What you should not be testing is the shape*** of the data returned as this would only be testing behavior that your test is already in complete control over. It would be like testing that a variable you just set to true in your test is in fact true.
Get some stuff from the database using a specific method and return it
At this point red flags should be going off all over the place. If this is the only thing that this method is good for, then you have to ask yourself why you would not just call the data access method directly? As the consumer of this class you already have control over which data access component is being used (you provided it) so why have a middle man.
* It is ok to test how your SUT responds to specifically shaped data. You might want to throw an exeption if null is returned, or the collection is empty. You might want to clip extra values from the list if more than N were returned, but you never want to test something that is outside the behavior of your SUT. Because you are in direct control over how the data being returned from you mocks is shaped, testing that would lead to the worst kind of test possible; a test that doesn't test anything, but still passes.
Many people use Mock Objects when they are writing unit tests. What is a Mock Object? Why would I ever need one? Do I need a Mock Object Framework?
Object Mocking is used to keep dependencies out of your unit test.
Sometimes you'll have a test like "SelectPerson" which will select a person from the database and return a Person object.
To do this, you would normally need a dependency on the database, however with object mocking you can simulate the interaction with the database with a mock framework, so it might return a dataset which looks like one returned from the database and you can then test your code to ensure that it handles translating a dataset to a person object, rather than using it to test that a connection to the database exists.
Several people have already answered the 'what', but here are a couple of quick 'whys' that I can think of:
Performance
Because unit tests should be fast, testing a component that
interacts with a network, a database, or other time-intensive
resource does not need to pay the penalty if it's done using mock
objects. The savings add up quickly.
Collaboration
If you are writing a nicely encapsulated piece of
code that needs to interact with someone else's code (that hasn't
been written yet, or is in being developed in parallel - a common
scenario), you can exercise your code with mock objects once an
interface has been agreed upon. Otherwise your code may not begin to
be tested until the other component is finished.
A mock object lets you test against just what you are writing, and abstract details such as accessing a resource (disk, a network service, etc). The mock then lets you pretend to be that external resource, or class or whatever.
You don't really need a mock object framework, just extend the class of the functionality you don't want to worry about in your test and make sure the class you are testing can use your mock instead of the real thing (pass it in via a constructor or setter or something.
Practice will show when mocks are helpful and when they aren't.
EDIT: Mocking resources is especially important so you don't have to rely on them to exist during the test, and you can mock the details of how they exist and what they respond (such as simulating a FileNotFoundException, or a webservice that is missing, or various possible return values of a webservice)... all without the slow access times involved (mocking will prove MUCH faster than accessing such resources in the test).
Do I need a Mock Object Framework?
Certainly not. Sometimes, writing mocks by hand can be quite tedious. But for simple things, it's not bad at all. Applying the principle of Last Responsible Moment to mocking frameworks, you should only switch from hand-written mocks to a framework when you've proven to yourself that hand-writing mocks is more trouble than it's worth.
If you're just getting starting with mocking, jumping straight into a framework is going to at least double your learning curve (can you double a curve?). Mocking frameworks will make much more sense when you've spent a few projects writing mocks by hand.
Object Mocking is a way to create a "virtual" or mocked object from an interface, abstract class, or class with virtual methods. It allows you to sort of wrap one of these in your own definition for testing purposes. It is useful for making an object that is relied on for a certain code block your are testing.
A popular one that I like to use is called Moq, but there are many others like RhinoMock and numerous ones that I don't know about.
It allows you to test how one part of your project interacts with the rest, without building the entire thing and potentially missing a vital part.
EDIT: Great example from wikipedia: It allows you to test out code beforehand, like a car designer uses a crash test dummy to test the behavior of a car during an accident.
Another use is it will let you test against other parts of your system that aren't built yet. For example, if your class depends on some other class that is part of a feature that someone else is working on, you can just ask for a mostly complete interface, program to the interface and just mock the details as you expect them to work. Then, make sure your assumptions about the interface were correct (either while you are developing, or once the feature is complete).
Whether or not you a mocking framework is useful depends in part on the language of the code you're writing. With a static language, you need to put in extra effort in order to trick the compiler into accepting your mock objects as a replacement for the real thing. In a dynamically-typed language such as Python, Ruby or Javascript, you can generally just attach the methods onto arbitrary object or class and pass that as the parameter -- so a framework would add much less value.
2 recommended mocking frameworks for .net Unit testing are Typemock Isolator and Rhino Mock.
In the following link you can see an explanation from Typemock as to why you need a mocking framework for Unit Testing.