Test Behaviour, Not methods

Test Behaviour, Not methods

JUnit4 introduced @Test annotations and removes the need to prefix test method names with ‘test’. Take advantage of this and use a different test case naming convention to test the class behaviour, not it's implementation
Compare the two units test below and see which one is easier to read.
Think about diagnosing a test failure and also how quickly you can understand the what the code does.


public class ShoppingCartTest {

	private ShoppingCart cart = null;

	@Before
	public void init() {
		cart = new ShoppingCart();
		cart.addItem( new
		ShoppingCart.Item( "Chocolate bar", 52 ) );
	}

	@Test

	public void testProcessPayment() {

		assertTrue( cart.processPayment( new CashPayment() ) );

		assertTrue( cart.processPayment( new VoucherPayment( "123" ) ) );

		assertFalse( cart.processPayment( new VoucherPayment( null ) ) );

		assertFalse( cart.processPayment( new VoucherPayment( "" ) ) );

	}

}

This test suite tests the expected behaviour and uses descriptive test names. Each test sticks to a single concept. This is also a great example of Unit Tests as documentation, each test case tells a story of what the code does.


public class ShoppingCartTest {
	private ShoppingCart cart = null;
	@Before
	public void init() {
		cart = new ShoppingCart();
		cart.addItem( new ShoppingCart.Item( "Chocolate bar", 52 ) );
	}

	@Test
	public void shouldProcessCashPayment() {
		assertTrue( cart.processPayment( new CashPayment() ) );
	}

	@Test
	public void shouldProcessVoucherPayment() {
		assertTrue( cart.processPayment( new VoucherPayment( "123" ) ) );
	}

	@Test

	public void shouldNotProcessVoucherPaymentForInvalidVoucherReference()
	{

		assertFalse( cart.processPayment( new VoucherPayment( null ) ) );

		assertFalse( cart.processPayment( new VoucherPayment( "" ) ) );

	}

}

Summary

• Try to stick with one assert or a single concept per test case
• Tests are much easier to read and maintain
• It's clear what has broken when a test fails
• Refactoring of production code should not require any changes to test code Good test names are a way of documenting the code for free<
• TDD enforces test cases like the example on the right hand side, forcing you to think about the class behaviour in advance of coding it