I’m currently using context/specification style tests. While I think frameworks like J.P.Boodhoo’s are beautiful, I prefer something that works with ReSharper, TD.NET and CI without extra hurdles. I also want something my team, with limited exposure to *Unit frameworks, can easily pick up.
I’d prefer not to have the ceremony and misleading terminology of “Test” attributes, but its a trade-off I’m willing to make to more easily to integrate with team members and third party tools.
I put my testing stack along with an example test/spec project on github under the project name Specish.
About my tests/specs:
I preface every test fixture with the name of the class I’m testing. This lets me type “PC” in the navigation window of ReSharper to get to a PatientController or any class that tests patient controller. - Automocks allow me to change constructor signatures with no consequence, and let me only mock objects and methods necessary for setup or verification. I stole the base class for my tests from here.
- I usually only have one assert per test method.
- I use a modified version of SpecExtensions I saw Steve Harman use at Cleveland Day of .NET last year… so instead of Assert.IsTrue(true) I write the more readable true.ShouldBeTrue();
- Custom ReSharper live templates for test fixtures and methods speed things up considerably.
The result looks something like this:
[TestFixture]
public class PatientController_when_searching_for_patients_returns_one_result : base_automock_test
{
ViewResult result;
IList<Patient> patients = new List<Patient>();
public override void establish_context()
{
patients.Add(new Patient{Id = 2});
Mock<IPatientService>()
.Setup(ps => ps.Search(It.IsAny<string>(), It.IsAny<string>()))
.Returns(patients);
}
public override void because()
{
result = Create<PatientController>().List("Joey", "Smith");
}
[Test]
public void it_returns_just_one_patient()
{
(result.ViewData.Model as Patient).ShouldEqual(patients[0]);
}
[Test]
public void it_returns_the_detail_view()
{
result.ViewName.ShouldEqual("Details");
}
}
And it shows up in the test runner as
PatientController when searching for patients returns one result
* it returns just one patient
* it returns the detail view
The test runner results document exactly how my controller behaves in this context.
PatientController returns just one patient and a detail view because I call List() on a PatientController in the context (search the returns one result) set in establish_context.
