Can anyone help me describing how function of Fitnesse differs from the JUnit.
I have been working with Fitnesse for few days. I am asking this question because I am still trying to understand the objective of the tool. I went through some of the web Articles, they were saying:
JUnit is to build the Code Right and Fitnesse is to build the Right code. But I want to know how?
Great if we can get some examples...
Thanks in Advance
---Sreenisha S---
The main difference for me is the target audience.
JUnit (and other unit test frameworks) are targeted to developers validating their code (still) does what they expected it to do. The test definition, execution and interpreting of output is expected to be done by programmers. The toolkit is designed for white-box testing, although it can be used for other goals as well.
FitNesse is intended for black-box testing, based on what the functionality has to be, not on how it is implemented. The intention is that domain knowledge suffices to create tests (or at least add test cases), execute them and get meaningful information from the test output.
In my usage programmers also work with FitNesse, but they use it to define integration tests working against an installed system to validate end-to-end behavior. We for instance test web applications with a browser (using Selenium) and SOAP interfaces offered by the system.
Unit tests are used for component tests (often with external components replaced by fakes/mocks) in a (dedicated) test process.
Does this help at all?
Related
I'm really getting frustrated with learning how to properly develop software using TDD. It seems that everyone does it differently and in a different order. At this point, I'd just like to know what are all the considerations? This much is what I've come up with: I should use rspec, and capybara. With that said, what are all the different types of test I need to write, to have a well built and tested application. I'm looking for a list that comprises the area of my application being tested, the framework needed to test it, and any dependencies.
For example, it seems that people advise to start by unit testing your models, but when I watch tutorials on TDD it seems like they only write integration test. Am I missing something?
Well, the theme "how do you TDD" is as much out there in the open as the theme "how do you properly test?". In Ruby, and more specifically in Rails, rspec should be the tool to start with, but not be done with. RSpec allows you to write Unit Tests for your components, to test them separately. In the Rails context, that means:
test your models
test your controllers
test your views
test your helpers
test your routes
It is a very good tool not exactly rails-bound, it is also used to test other frameworks.
After you're done with RSpec, you should jump to cucumber. Cucumber (http://cukes.info/) is the most used tool (again, for the Rails environment) to write integration tests. You can then integrate capybara on cucumber.
After you're done with cucumber, you'll be done with having tested your application backend and (part of) its HTML output. That's when you should also test your javascript code. How to do that? First, you'll have to Unit test it. Jasmine (http://pivotal.github.com/jasmine/) is one of the tools you might use for the job.
Then you'll have to test its integration in your structure. How to do that? You'll come back to cucumber and integrate selenium (http://seleniumhq.org/) with your cucumber framework, and you'll be able to test your integration "live" in the browser, having access to your javascript magic and testing it on the spot.
So, after you're done with these steps, you'll have covered most of the necessary steps to have a well-integrated test environment. Are we done? Not really. You should also set a coverage tool (one available: https://github.com/colszowka/simplecov) to check if your code is being really well tested and no loose ends are left.
After you're done with these morose steps, you should also do one last thing, in case you are not developing it all alone and the team is big enough to make it still unmanageable by itself: you'll set a test server, which will do nothing other than run all the previous steps regularly and deliver notifications about its results.
So, all of this sets a good TDD environment for the interested developer. I only named the most used frameworks in the ruby/rails community for the different types of testing, but that doesn't mean there aren't other frameworks as or more suitable for your job. It still doesn't teach you how to test properly. For that there's more theory involved, and a lot of subdebates.
In case I forgot something, please write it in a comment below.
Besides that, you should approach how you test properly. Namely, are you going for the declarative or imperative approach?
Start simple and add more tools and techniques as you need them. There are many way to TDD an app because every app is different. One way to do that is to start with an end-to-end test with Rspec and Capybara (or Cucumber and Capybara) and then add more fine-grained tests as you need them.
You know you need more fine-grained tests when it takes more than a few minutes to make a Capybara test pass.
Also, if the domain of your application is non-trivial it might be more fruitful for you to start testing the domain first.
It depends! Try different approaches and see what works for you.
End-to-end development of real-world applications with TDD is an underdocumented activity indeed. It's true that you'll mostly find schoolbook examples, katas and theoretical articles out there. However, a few books take a more comprehensive and practical approach to TDD - GOOS for instance (highly recommended), and, to a lesser extent, Beck's Test Driven Development by Example, although they don't address RoR specifically.
The approach described in GOOS starts with writing end-to-end acceptance tests (integration tests, which may amount to RSpec tests in your case) but within that loop, you code as many TDD unit tests as you need to design your lower-level objects. When writing those you can basically start where you want -from the outer layers, the inner layers or just the parts of your application that are most convenient to you. As long as you mock out any dependency, they'll remain unit tests anyway.
I also have the same question when I started learning rails, there're so many tools or methods to make the test better but after spending to much time on that, I finally realized that you could simply forget the rule that you must do something or not, test something that you think it might have problem first, then somewhere else. Well ,it needs time.
that's just my point of view.
Seems like the internet doesn't have a definitive answer, or set of principles to help me answer the question. So I turn to the great folk on SO to help me find answers or guiding thoughts :)
SpecFlow is very useful for BDD in .NET. But when we talk about BDD are we just talking integration/acceptance tests, or are we also talking unit tests - a total replacement for TDD?
I've only used it on small projects, but I find that even for my unit tests, SpecFlow improves code documentation and thinking in terms of language. Converseley, I can't see the full code for a test in one place - as the steps are fragmented.
Now to you..........
EDIT: I forgot to mention that I see RSpec in the RoR community which uses BDD-style syntax for unit testing.
I've recently started to use SpecFlow for my BDD testing, but also, I still use unit and integration tests.
Basically, I split the tests into seperate projects:
Specs
Integration
Unit
My unit tests are for testing a single method and do not perform any database calls, or external references whatsoever. I use integration tests for single method calls (maybe sometime two) which do interact with an external resources, such as a database, or web service, etc.
I use BDD to describe tests which mimick the business/domain requirements of the project. For example, I would have specs for the invoice generation feature of a project; or for working with a shopping basket. These tests follow the
As a user, I want, In order to
type of semantics.
My advise is to split your tests based on your needs. Avoid trying to perform unit testing using SpecFlow.
We have started using Specflow even for our unit tests.
The main reason (and benefit) for this is that we find that it forces you to write the tests from a behavior point of view, which in turn forces you to write in a more implementation agnostic way and this ultimately results in tests which are less brittle and more refactoring friendly.
Sure this can also be done with standard unit testing frameworks, but you aren't guided that way as easily as we have found we are using specflow and the gherkin syntax.
There is some overhead setting things up for specflow, but we find this is quickly repaid when you have quite a few tests (due to the significant step reusability that you can get with specflow) or you need refactor your implementation.
Plus you get nice readable specs that are easy for newcomers to the team to understand.
Given:
Unit tests are test of (small) "units of code"
The customer of most “units of codes” are other programmers.
Part of the reason for having a unit test is to provide an example of how to call the code.
Therefore:
Clearly unit tests should normally be written in the programming language that the users of the “unit of code” will be calling it with.
However:
Sometimes data tables are needed to setup the conditions a unit test runs in.
Most unit test frameworks are not good at using tables of data.
Therefore:
Specflow may be the best option for some unit test, but should not be your default choose.
I see it as an integration testing which mean it doesn't replace your unit test cases written as part of your TDD process. Someone will have different opinion about this. IMHO unit test case only test the methods/functions and all the dependencies should be mocked and injected. When in it comes to integration testing, you will be injecting real dependencies instead of mocked one. You could do the same integration testing with any of the unit testing frameworks, but the BDD provides you cleaner way of explaining the integration test use case in a Domain Specific Language which is a plain English(or any localized language).
Ta,
Rajeesh
I used specflow for BDD testing on two different good sized applications. Once we worked through the kinks of the sentence naming conventions, it worked out pretty good. BA's and QA's, and even interns could write BDD tests for the application.
However, I ALSO used it for unit tests. Heresy! I can hear some of you scream. However, there were VERY good reasons for it. The system was responsible for making many calculations or determinations based off a lot of different data. With lots of unit tests that require all this data to be input for test purposes, it makes it a LOT easier to manage that data used for the unit tests via the table format provided by specflow. Effectively mocking the data repository in table format, allowing the different components to be vigorously tested.
I don't know if I would do it in every case, but in the ones I used it for, it made laying out the volumes of data necessary for for performing the unit tests so much easier and clearer.
In the end we are trying to deliver to the customer exactly what the customer wants and as such I really don't see the need to write unit tests in addition to SpecFlow. After all, it exercises the same code base. I am fairly new to BDD/ATDD/TDD but other than being "complete" and strictly adhering to TDD I'm finding it unnecessary to write more unit tests.
Now I suppose if the team was dispersed and the developer was not able to run the entire application then separate unit tests would be necessary but where the developer(s) has access to the entire code base and is able to run the application, then why bother write more tests.
I am looking at SpecFlow examples, and it's MVC sample contains several alternatives for testing:
Acceptance tests based on validating results generated by controllers;
Integration tests using MvcIntegrationTestFramework;
Automated acceptance tests using Selenium;
Manual acceptance tests when tester is prompted to manually validate results.
I must say I am quite impressed with how well SpecFlow examples are written (and I managed to run them within minutes after download, just had to configure a database and install Selenium Remote Control server). Looking at the test alternatives I can see that most of them complement each other rather than being an alternative. I can think of the following combinations of these tests:
Controllers are tested in TDD style rather than using SpecFlow (I believe Given/When/Then type of tests should be applied on higher, end-to-end level; they should provide good code coverage for respective components;
MvcIntegrationTestFramework is useful when running integration tests during development sessions, these tests are also part of daily builds;
Although Selenium-based tests are automated, they are slow and are mainly to be started during QA sessions, to quickly validate that there are no broken logic in pages and site workflow;
Manual acceptance tests when tester is prompted to confirm result validity are mainly to verify page look and feel.
If you use SpecFlow, Cucumber or other BDD acceptance test framework in you Web development, can you please share your practices regarding choosing between different test types.
Thanks in advance.
It's all behaviour.
Given a particular context, when an event occurs (within a particular scope), then some outcome should happen.
The scope can be a whole application, a part of a system or a single class. Even a function behaves this way, with inputs as context and the output as outcome (you can use BDD for functional language as well!)
I tend to use Unit frameworks (NUnit, JUnit, RSpec, etc.) at a class or integration level, because the audience is technical. Sometimes I document the Given / When / Then in comments.
At a scenario level, I try to find out who actually wants to help read or write the scenarios. Even business stakeholders can read text containing a few dots and brackets, so the main reason for having a natural language framework like MSpec or JBehave is if they want to write scenarios themselves, or show them to people who will really be put off by the dots and brackets.
After that, I look at how the framework will play with the build system, and how we'll give the ability to read or write as appropriate to the interested stakeholders.
Here's an example I wrote to show the kind of thing you can do with scenarios using simple DSLs. This is just written in NUnit.
Here's an example in the same codebase showing Given, When, Then in class-level example comments.
I abstract the steps behind, then I put screens or pages behind those, then in the screens and pages I call whatever automation framework I'm using - which could be Selenium, Watir, WebRat, Microsoft UI Automation, etc.
The example I provided is itself an automation tool, so the scenarios are demonstrating the behaviour of the automation tool through demonstrating the behaviour of a fake gui, just in case that gets confusing. Hope it helps anyway!
Since acceptance tests are a kind of functional tests, the general goal is to test your application with them end-to-end. On the other hand, you might need to consider efficiency (how much effort is to implement the test automation), maintainability, performance and reliability of the test automation. It is also important that the test automation can easily fit into the development process, so that it supports a kind of "test first" approach (to support outside-in development).
So this is a trade off, that can be different for each situation (that's why we provided the alternatives).
I'm pretty sure, that today the most widely fitting option is to test at the controller layer. (Maybe later as UI and UI automation frameworks will evolve, this will change.)
At present, my development process flows like this:
I describe the expected behaviour as an integration test using using WebRat
I write the Ruby on Rails code to provide that behaviour, so passing the test
I refactor, ensuring the tests still pass at the end of the process
I write the next integration test
It seems to me that by definition, my integration tests are testing every model, controller and view that I can create. In reality, am I missing anything by not writing unit tests too?
I'm actually pretty sympathetic to your point of view here. I love Cucumber and I love RSpec -- and I use them both, but not always on the same code. For instance, I rarely write RSpec examples for Rails controllers these days, and I almost never write view specs. Most of my controllers are very similar and don't deviate much from the "stock" controller pattern -- which is already well-tested by Rails's own unit tests. Verifying the same behavior again doesn't gain much for the time it takes and the hassle of mocking all the models. With Cucumber at an integration level I can skip that mocking and get the essential verification I'm looking for. View testing is handled much more transparently in Cucumber most of the time as well. (Then I should see "foo" and so forth.)
But that isn't to say I don't use RSpec extensively in Rails. I use it for the places where my logic lives: models, controller filters, and view helpers. I also have a couple of projects that are almost all business logic, e.g. libraries or API adapters against complex third-party interfaces. For those I usually find myself using RSpec exclusively and skipping Cucumber.
As a heuristic, I'd suggest that you should strongly consider writing a unit test any time any of the following questions can be answered "Yes":
Is the code I'm writing more than trivially complicated?
Does this code exist primarily to give answers to other code?
Is this existing code that I'm refactoring (that doesn't already have a unit test)?
Have I found a bug in this code? (If so, write a unit test before fixing it so it never sneaks in again.)
Do I have to think for more than ten seconds about the most elegant way to implement this code?
Is my Spidey Sense tingling?
If none of the above is true, then maybe you can get away with just doing integration testing. Again, there are a lot of cases where that's reasonable. But if you do run into problems later, be prepared to pay the price -- and that price should include writing unit tests at any moment if they seem called for.
Integration tests are useful to verify that different parts of code are well integrated. They may involve all layers and cover all code but... when an integration test fails, will it tell you where the bug is located? I may be wrong but I don't think so. This will just tell you that there is a problem somewhere. On the other hand, when a real unit tests (written in isolation using mocks or stubs) fails, you know exactly in which unit the problem is located (this is actually the purpose of unit testing, verifying that a unit implements the expected behavior). In other words, unit tests and integration tests are both useful but they have different purposes.
Do you have any rake tasks? Custom capistrano code? Cron methods? An API? Monkeypatches? How about flex or iPhone app integration? A job runner?
In a typical Rails application, there's lots of code that isn't exercised by the HTML UI. So no, unless your app is incredibly simple, webrat tests won't be sufficient.
I'm building a test harness for my Delphi 2009 app. Testing the logic is fairly simple. Making sure the forms work properly is proving a bit more complicated. I'd like a way to simulate real user input, to open a form, make it think there's a user typing certain things and clicking in certain places, and make sure it reacts correctly. I'm sure there's a way to do this, I just don't know what it is. Does anyone know how to do it?
DUnit has GUITesting.pas whicih extends testing so you can send clicks, keys and text to controls on form, but that is about it.
Last year there where mentions of Zombie GUI testing framework that was used internaly by CodeGear developers, but nothing since Steve left for Falafel.
TestComplete is a good choice. Another commercial option for GUI testing is SmarteScript:
well for .net there's NUnitForms for GUI testing a win application.
don't know any open source for delphi though.
Test Complete can test delphi forms but it's not free.
There's 2 parts to this, firstly how do you automate the GUI, and secondly how do I then 'test' whether its working/not working.
Firtsly: To automate the GUI on windows try using AutoIT. Its a free tool for controlling windows interfaces, sending keyboard input events etc. http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/
Secondly: Testing is a big field, and I won't try and give you a whirlwind tour. But the mechanics of driving the GUI and testing the results could be handled using AutoIT's built in Basic like language or by using it in conjunction with a language like Ruby and TestUnit (rubys built-in unit testing framework).
If there is nothing Deliphi-specic out there and you need a quick solution try some easy to learn scripting solutions like AutoIt.
For a bit more sophisticated scripting, you might have a look on Scripted GUI Testing with Ruby.
But be aware, that you should not test too much functionality via the GUI, because such tests are very likely to break. If you end up with too much GUI testing you may need to rethink the design: Decouple logic from the GUI and test the logic directly with some xUnit framework.
Also have a look on a similar question about windows forms test automation.
It seems like DUnit has some gui-testing functionality: delphiextreme.com
Not exactly an answer to your question, but there is a very good page (IMHO of course) about GUI Architectures by Martin Fowler, featuring the "Humble View" architecture as the last entry, which is geared specifically towards test-driven software development. Worth looking into.
This will of course not help you with the task of testing whether all controls are wired correctly and handle all necessary events, but it should help to minimize the amount of GUI code that does need testing.
OpenCTF is good for you.
Quote:
OpenCTF is a test framework add-on for Embarcadero Delphi® which
performs automatic checks of all components in Forms (or DataModules).
It provides an easy way to build automatic quality checks for large
projects where many components have to pass repeated tests.
Adding OpenCTF tests to a DUnit test suite requires only a few lines of code.
Writing your own custom component tests needs only a few seconds.
OpenCTF is based on the DUnit open source test framework and extends
it by specialized test classes and helper functions.
Please head here to download.