On Thu, Aug 09, 2001 at 10:15:24AM +0100, Stuart Roebuck wrote:
> Funnily enough I spent Tuesday working out a solution for this kind of
> issue for a Cocoon Action I'm working on at the moment.
>
> I went for a 'mock' object approach [see
> <http://mockobjects.sourceforge.net/endotesting.html>],
Is there some mailing list I'm not on where cool stuff like this gets
announced? ;) I think this mock object approach could simplify many
Avalon unit tests.
>
[snip C2 Action example]
>
> My personal feeling is that setting up specialized TestCases for testing,
> whilst it may simplify the code of tests for people familiar with the code,
> removes transparency and adds a level of complexity into the test cases
> that could make them harder to maintain. e.g. you need to look at the
> definition of the new TestCase in order to determine what the pre-set
> state is and then learn the new methods for altering it. With plain Mock
> classes you have to explicitly setup everything in the TestCase which may
> require more lines of code (but then you can easily do a copy and paste
> job from a previous test case), however, you end up with a test case that
> is self contained and self documenting. The only new methods you need to
> learn are additional methods in the mock classes that provide setup or
> validation functionality.
>
I don't quite see how using Mock objects replaces Giacomo's solution. It
seems to me that the Mock object technique is only applicable when you
have a sausage-machine setup; feed an object it, crank the handle, get
it out and examine what's happened to it. I can't see that this situation
occurs much in your average Component's lifecycle. There's no point in a
MockConfiguration or MockContext, as they're not returnable.
> Stuart.
>
> PS. I'm intending feeding back the mock objects to Cocoon if folk are
> interested.
Hmm.. perhaps an org.apache.mock.* hierarchy, maintained in the
sourceforge mockobjects-java package?
--Jeff
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