Matt and all,
I took a quick stab at this as it didn't look too bad, but
unfortunately, it isn't quite that simple. FlexUnit is written such
that it expects a number of things to happen synchronously, which
causes some other problems in this case.
Let me explain. After modifying TestCase::runMiddle() to wait for a
flag indicating that the testcase setup has completed, runMiddle
fires off a timer and waits for the flag to change. At this point,
runMiddle, as called by ProtectedMiddleTestCase::protect(), returns
and the next TestCase is fired off. In the end, this results in the
setup function being called many times before the test cases
actually fire off (as the test cases are now waiting for the flag to
change) and many test functions being called in parallel when the
flag changes.
There are a couple of different ways that seem like obvious
solutions:
1) Change the setup process so that it worked kind of like the async
calls as handled by addAsync.
2) Instead of allowing runMiddle to return (as its synchronous), put
it in a while loop waiting for the flag to change [!BAD HACK!]
I don't fully understand the interactions between all the different
classes and objects at this point, so I'm not sure if there is an
easy way to get to a reasonable solution, so I'm asking for
feedback. Is there an easier way to make this work correctly?
Other suggestions?
Another sample use case:
Unfortunately, when callbacks are registered with addAsync(), the
order in which the calls are made imposes a restriction on the order
in which the callbacks can return.
For example, assume my test requires two different XML files loaded
from externally:
public function testValidateExternalRefs():void {
var loader1:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
var loader2:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
loader1.addEventListener(Event.COoverride
MPLETE,addAsync(onComplete1,TIMEOUT));
loader2.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE,addAsync(onComplete2,TIMEOUT));
loader1.load(new URLRequest(myUrl1));
loader2.load(new URLRequest(myUrl2));
}
The use case above presents a problem because I cannot guarantee
which response is going to come back first. Admittedly, in this
case I could load the files in the setUp call (or chain a bunch of
events so that the first one has loaded, and then the second one has
loaded, and so on and so forth). The problem that I'm running into
is because of the required strict ordering of asynchronous
responses, I'm having to chain a lot of events for something that
could be quite simple. Although the above use case is fabricated, I
hope it shows the problem.
Does anybody have some suggestions on how I might work around these
issues? I'll gladly modify code if I need to -- I'm just trying to
avoid having to understand all the code from the ground up to come
up with a solution.
Thanks for the help.
--Kaleb
-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Chotin [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Mon, 06 Mar 2006 22:40:46 -0800
Subject: [flexcoders] Asynchronous TestCase.setUp in FlexUnit
My thought is that this is a good use-case and you should look into
proposing how a class should indicate asynchronous setup and
teardown
and then go ahead and implement. Then submit as a proposal :-)
One idea is that we could add a variable called ready to the
TestCase
that is by default true. We would then adjust the runMiddle()
method to
check the ready variable and if it is true go ahead and call
runTestOrAsync. If it is false it simply would wait and call itself
again a little later. Then in your setup you set ready to false,
and
when your data loads you set ready to true.
I haven't thought it all the way through, but something like this
could
work. Check the source out and maybe override some of those methods
in
your own testcase to see how it works out.
Matt
-----Original Message-----
From: bringrags [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, March 06, 2006 2:02 PM
Subject: [flexcoders] Asynchronous TestCase.setUp in FlexUnit
Hi,
I've been using FlexUnit with one of my projects and ran into a
problem. In one of my test cases, I want to load a bunch of data
from
an XML file in the TestCase.setUp() method, and have all of the
individual tests use this as a fixture.
The problem is that loading a file is an asynchronous operation, but
there's no mechanism to make setUp asynchronous. Consider the
following excerpt:
public function setUp():void
{
var loader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
loader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE,onComplete);
loader.load(new URLRequest("myfile.xml"));
}
private function onComplete(event:Event):void
{
var loader:URLLoader = URLLoader(event.target);
myXML = new XML(loader.data);
}
public function testSomething():void
{
assertTrue("Should pass", myXML.someElement = "some value");
}
The problem is that testSomething() gets called before onComplete().
Ideally I would like to prevent the tests from running until the
onComplete() method is called.
FlexUnit provides support for having a chain of asynchronous tests,
but it doesn't seem to provide support for chaining asynchronous
setup
tasks. One possible workaround is to have each test method
explicitly
prepare the setup fixture:
public function testSomething():void
{
beginTestSetup(testSomethingHandler);
}
private function testSomethingHandler(event:Event):void
{
endTestSetup(event);
assertTrue("Should pass", xml.someElement = "some value");
}
private function beginTestSetup(eventHandler:Function):void
{
var loader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
loader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE,addAsync(eventHandler,1000));
loader.load(new URLRequest("myfile.xml"));
}
private function endTestSetup(event:Event):void
{
var loader:URLLoader = URLLoader(event.target);
myXML = new XML(loader.data);
}
But this is less than ideal. Any thoughts?
-- Brian
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