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authorxue <>2006-07-07 14:54:15 +0000
committerxue <>2006-07-07 14:54:15 +0000
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+<html>
+<head>
+<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
+<title>
+ Extending the SimpleTest unit tester with additional expectation classes
+ </title>
+<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="docs.css" title="Styles">
+</head>
+<body>
+<div class="menu_back">
+<div class="menu">
+<h2>
+<a href="index.html">SimpleTest</a>
+</h2>
+<ul>
+<li>
+<a href="overview.html">Overview</a>
+</li>
+<li>
+<a href="unit_test_documentation.html">Unit tester</a>
+</li>
+<li>
+<a href="group_test_documentation.html">Group tests</a>
+</li>
+<li>
+<a href="server_stubs_documentation.html">Server stubs</a>
+</li>
+<li>
+<a href="mock_objects_documentation.html">Mock objects</a>
+</li>
+<li>
+<a href="partial_mocks_documentation.html">Partial mocks</a>
+</li>
+<li>
+<a href="reporter_documentation.html">Reporting</a>
+</li>
+<li>
+<span class="chosen">Expectations</span>
+</li>
+<li>
+<a href="web_tester_documentation.html">Web tester</a>
+</li>
+<li>
+<a href="form_testing_documentation.html">Testing forms</a>
+</li>
+<li>
+<a href="authentication_documentation.html">Authentication</a>
+</li>
+<li>
+<a href="browser_documentation.html">Scriptable browser</a>
+</li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+</div>
+<h1>Expectation documentation</h1>
+<div class="content">
+ <p>
+<a class="target" name="mock">
+<h2>More control over mock objects</h2>
+</a>
+</p>
+ <p>
+ The default behaviour of the
+ <a href="mock_objects_documentation.html">mock objects</a>
+ in
+ <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/simpletest/">SimpleTest</a>
+ is either an identical match on the argument or to allow any argument at all.
+ For almost all tests this is sufficient.
+ Sometimes, though, you want to weaken a test case.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ One place where a test can be too tightly coupled is with
+ text matching.
+ Suppose we have a component that outputs a helpful error
+ message when something goes wrong.
+ You want to test that the correct error was sent, but the actual
+ text may be rather long.
+ If you test for the text exactly, then every time the exact wording
+ of the message changes, you will have to go back and edit the test suite.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ For example, suppose we have a news service that has failed
+ to connect to its remote source.
+<pre>
+<strong>class NewsService {
+ ...
+ function publish(&amp;$writer) {
+ if (! $this-&gt;isConnected()) {
+ $writer-&gt;write('Cannot connect to news service "' .
+ $this-&gt;_name . '" at this time. ' .
+ 'Please try again later.');
+ }
+ ...
+ }
+}</strong>
+</pre>
+ Here it is sending its content to a
+ <span class="new_code">Writer</span> class.
+ We could test this behaviour with a
+ <span class="new_code">MockWriter</span> like so...
+<pre>
+class TestOfNewsService extends UnitTestCase {
+ ...
+ function testConnectionFailure() {<strong>
+ $writer = &amp;new MockWriter($this);
+ $writer-&gt;expectOnce('write', array(
+ 'Cannot connect to news service ' .
+ '"BBC News" at this time. ' .
+ 'Please try again later.'));
+
+ $service = &amp;new NewsService('BBC News');
+ $service-&gt;publish($writer);
+
+ $writer-&gt;tally();</strong>
+ }
+}
+</pre>
+ This is a good example of a brittle test.
+ If we decide to add additional instructions, such as
+ suggesting an alternative news source, we will break
+ our tests even though no underlying functionality
+ has been altered.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ To get around this, we would like to do a regular expression
+ test rather than an exact match.
+ We can actually do this with...
+<pre>
+class TestOfNewsService extends UnitTestCase {
+ ...
+ function testConnectionFailure() {
+ $writer = &amp;new MockWriter($this);<strong>
+ $writer-&gt;expectOnce(
+ 'write',
+ array(new WantedPatternExpectation('/cannot connect/i')));</strong>
+
+ $service = &amp;new NewsService('BBC News');
+ $service-&gt;publish($writer);
+
+ $writer-&gt;tally();
+ }
+}
+</pre>
+ Instead of passing in the expected parameter to the
+ <span class="new_code">MockWriter</span> we pass an
+ expectation class called
+ <span class="new_code">WantedPatternExpectation</span>.
+ The mock object is smart enough to recognise this as special
+ and to treat it differently.
+ Rather than simply comparing the incoming argument to this
+ object, it uses the expectation object itself to
+ perform the test.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The <span class="new_code">WantedPatternExpectation</span> takes
+ the regular expression to match in its constructor.
+ Whenever a comparison is made by the <span class="new_code">MockWriter</span>
+ against this expectation class, it will do a
+ <span class="new_code">preg_match()</span> with this pattern.
+ With our test case above, as long as "cannot connect"
+ appears in the text of the string, the mock will issue a pass
+ to the unit tester.
+ The rest of the text does not matter.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The possible expectation classes are...
+ <table>
+<tbody>
+ <tr>
+<td><span class="new_code">EqualExpectation</span></td><td>An equality, rather than the stronger identity comparison</td>
+</tr>
+ <tr>
+<td><span class="new_code">NotEqualExpectation</span></td><td>An inequality comparison</td>
+</tr>
+ <tr>
+<td><span class="new_code">IndenticalExpectation</span></td><td>The default mock object check which must match exactly</td>
+</tr>
+ <tr>
+<td><span class="new_code">NotIndenticalExpectation</span></td><td>Inverts the mock object logic</td>
+</tr>
+ <tr>
+<td><span class="new_code">WantedPatternExpectation</span></td><td>Uses a Perl Regex to match a string</td>
+</tr>
+ <tr>
+<td><span class="new_code">NoUnwantedPatternExpectation</span></td><td>Passes only if failing a Perl Regex</td>
+</tr>
+ <tr>
+<td><span class="new_code">IsAExpectation</span></td><td>Checks the type or class name only</td>
+</tr>
+ <tr>
+<td><span class="new_code">NotAExpectation</span></td><td>Opposite of the <span class="new_code">IsAExpectation</span></td>
+</tr>
+ <tr>
+<td><span class="new_code">MethodExistsExpectation</span></td><td>Checks a method is available on an object</td>
+</tr>
+ </tbody>
+</table>
+ Most take the expected value in the constructor.
+ The exceptions are the pattern matchers, which take a regular expression,
+ and the <span class="new_code">IsAExpectation</span> and <span class="new_code">NotAExpectation</span> which takes a type
+ or class name as a string.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+<a class="target" name="behaviour">
+<h2>Using expectations to control stubs</h2>
+</a>
+</p>
+ <p>
+ The expectation classes can be used not just for sending assertions
+ from mock objects, but also for selecting behaviour for either
+ the
+ <a href="mock_objects_documentation.html">mock objects</a>
+ or the
+ <a href="server_stubs_documentation.html">server stubs</a>.
+ Anywhere a list of arguments is given, a list of expectation objects
+ can be inserted instead.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Suppose we want an authorisation server stub to simulate a successful login
+ only if it receives a valid session object.
+ We can do this as follows...
+<pre>
+Stub::generate('Authorisation');
+<strong>
+$authorisation = new StubAuthorisation();
+$authorisation-&gt;setReturnValue(
+ 'isAllowed',
+ true,
+ array(new IsAExpectation('Session', 'Must be a session')));
+$authorisation-&gt;setReturnValue('isAllowed', false);</strong>
+</pre>
+ We have set the default stub behaviour to return false when
+ <span class="new_code">isAllowed</span> is called.
+ When we call the method with a single parameter that
+ is a <span class="new_code">Session</span> object, it will return true.
+ We have also added a second parameter as a message.
+ This will be displayed as part of the mock object
+ failure message if this expectation is the cause of
+ a failure.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This kind of sophistication is rarely useful, but is included for
+ completeness.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+<a class="target" name="extending">
+<h2>Creating your own expectations</h2>
+</a>
+</p>
+ <p>
+ The expectation classes have a very simple structure.
+ So simple that it is easy to create your own versions for
+ commonly used test logic.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ As an example here is the creation of a class to test for
+ valid IP addresses.
+ In order to work correctly with the stubs and mocks the new
+ expectation class should extend
+ <span class="new_code">SimpleExpectation</span>...
+<pre>
+<strong>class ValidIp extends SimpleExpectation {
+
+ function test($ip) {
+ return (ip2long($ip) != -1);
+ }
+
+ function testMessage($ip) {
+ return "Address [$ip] should be a valid IP address";
+ }
+}</strong>
+</pre>
+ There are only two methods to implement.
+ The <span class="new_code">test()</span> method should
+ evaluate to true if the expectation is to pass, and
+ false otherwise.
+ The <span class="new_code">testMessage()</span> method
+ should simply return some helpful text explaining the test
+ that was carried out.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This class can now be used in place of the earlier expectation
+ classes.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+<a class="target" name="unit">
+<h2>Under the bonnet of the unit tester</h2>
+</a>
+</p>
+ <p>
+ The <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/simpletest/">SimpleTest unit testing framework</a>
+ also uses the expectation classes internally for the
+ <a href="unit_test_documentation.html">UnitTestCase class</a>.
+ We can also take advantage of these mechanisms to reuse our
+ homebrew expectation classes within the test suites directly.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The most crude way of doing this is to use the
+ <span class="new_code">SimpleTest::assertExpectation()</span> method to
+ test against it directly...
+<pre>
+<strong>class TestOfNetworking extends UnitTestCase {
+ ...
+ function testGetValidIp() {
+ $server = &amp;new Server();
+ $this-&gt;assertExpectation(
+ new ValidIp(),
+ $server-&gt;getIp(),
+ 'Server IP address-&gt;%s');
+ }
+}</strong>
+</pre>
+ This is a little untidy compared with our usual
+ <span class="new_code">assert...()</span> syntax.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ For such a simple case we would normally create a
+ separate assertion method on our test case rather
+ than bother using the expectation class.
+ If we pretend that our expectation is a little more
+ complicated for a moment, so that we want to reuse it,
+ we get...
+<pre>
+class TestOfNetworking extends UnitTestCase {
+ ...<strong>
+ function assertValidIp($ip, $message = '%s') {
+ $this-&gt;assertExpectation(new ValidIp(), $ip, $message);
+ }</strong>
+
+ function testGetValidIp() {
+ $server = &amp;new Server();<strong>
+ $this-&gt;assertValidIp(
+ $server-&gt;getIp(),
+ 'Server IP address-&gt;%s');</strong>
+ }
+}
+</pre>
+ It is unlikely we would ever need this degree of control
+ over the testing machinery.
+ It is rare to need the expectations for more than pattern
+ matching.
+ Also, complex expectation classes could make the tests
+ harder to read and debug.
+ These mechanisms are really of most use to authors of systems
+ that will extend the test framework to create their own tool set.
+ </p>
+
+ </div>
+<div class="copyright">
+ Copyright<br>Marcus Baker, Jason Sweat, Perrick Penet 2004
+ </div>
+</body>
+</html>