Behavioral Testing
July 3, 2013 6 Comments
Jimmy Bogard recently gave a presentation at the NDCOslo about a testing strategy he calls Holistic Testing. Have a look at the video, it’s worth your time!
Among a lot of other things he talked about why he doesn’t use mocking frameworks (or hand-crafted mock objects) very often in his tests. According to Jimmy, testing with mocks tends to couple your tests to the implementation details of your code. Instead he prefers to test the behavior of his code and ignore said implementation as far as possible.
While I don’t agree with his sample code I totally agree with his statement. But let’s have a look.
[Theory, AutoData]
public void DummyTest(Customer customer)
{
var calculator = A.Fake<ITaxCalculator>();
A.CallTo(() => calculator.Calculate(customer)).Returns(10);
var factory = new OrderFactory(calculator);
var order = factory.Build(customer);
order.Tax.ShouldEqual(10);
}
This code snippet uses xUnit’s Theories for data driven tests along with AutoFixture’s extension to that feature which “deterministically creates random test data”. AutoFixture creates the Customer object. Then Jimmy uses FakeItEasy to create a mock for the ITaxCalculator, setup the return value for the call to it’s Calculate() method. Passes the calculator to the constructor of the OrderFactory lets the factory create an Order and asserts that the correct tax is set on the order. Nothing spectacular so far (if you are already familiar with data Theories and AutoFixture that is…).
But what happens if the factory no longer uses a calculator? Or if we add another parameter to the constructor? After all the constructor is just an implementation detail that we don’t want to care about. But these changes will break our test code. And this is where Jimmy gets fancy.
Assuming that we already build our code according to the Dependency Injection Pattern and use a DI container in our project (that’s quite some assumption…), we already have the information about how the factory is assembled and which calculator (if any) is to be used in the configuration of said container. So why not use the container to provide us with the factory instead of new’ing it up ourselves?
I took the liberty of streamlining Jimmy’s test a bit more by letting AutoFixture create the customer as well. The ContainerDataAttribute is derived from AutoFixture’s AutoDataAttribute. My sample uses Unity instead of StructureMap but it works all the same. In contradiction to Jimmy’s statement (around 45:46 in the video) Unity does support the creation child containers. Although I have to admit that this is the first scenario where this feature makes sense to me. But that is a different story I’ll save for another day.
[Theory, ContainerData]
public void DummyTest(OrderFactory factory, Customer customer)
{
Order order = factory.Build(customer);
order.Tax.ShouldEqual(10);
}
Wow. That’s what I call straight to the point. You don’t care about the creation process of your system-under-test (the factory) or your test data (the customer). You just care about the behavior which is to set the correct tax rate on your order object.
As the tax rate differs from one state to another it might not make sense to test for that specific value without controlling its calculation to some extent (e.g. via a mock object…) but that’s a common problem with HelloWorld!-samples and does not diminish the brilliancy of the general concept.
So let’s see how the ContainerDataAttribute is implemented.
public class ContainerDataAttribute : AutoDataAttribute
{
public ContainerDataAttribute()
: base(new Fixture().Customize(
new ContainerCustomization(
new UnityContainer().AddExtension(
new ContainerConfiguration()))))
{
}
}
We derive from AutoFixture’s AutoDataAttribute which does the heavy lifting for us (like integrating with xUnit, creating random test data, …). We call the base class’ constructor handing it a customized Fixture object (that is AutoFixture’s lynchpin for creating test data). The customization receives a preconfigured UnityContainer instance as a parameter. As you might have guessed UnityContainer is the Unity DI container. Unity’s configuration system is not as advanced as that of most other containers. Especially it does not bring a dedicated way to package configuration data (like StructureMap’s Registry for example). But you can (ab)use the UnityContainerExtension class to achieve the same result. Just place your configuration code inside your implementation of the abstract Initialize() method and add the extension to the container.
public class ContainerConfiguration : UnityContainerExtension
{
protected override void Initialize()
{
this.Container.RegisterType<IFoo, Foo>();
this.Container.RegisterType<ITaxCalculator, DefaultTaxCalculator>();
}
}
It makes sense to re-use as much of your production configuration as possible. But you should consider to modify it in places where the tests might interfere with actual production systems (like sending emails, modifying production databases etc.).
The customization to AutoFixture hooks up two last-chance handlers for creating objects by adding them to IFixture.ResidueCollectors.
public class ContainerCustomization : ICustomization
{
private readonly IUnityContainer container;
public ContainerCustomization(IUnityContainer container)
{
this.container = container;
}
public void Customize(IFixture fixture)
{
fixture.ResidueCollectors.Add(new ChildContainerSpecimenBuilder(this.container));
fixture.ResidueCollectors.Add(new ContainerSpecimenBuilder(this.container));
}
}
AutoFixture calls these object creators SpecimenBuilders. The first one we hook up is responsible for creating a child container if a test requires an IUnityContainer as a method parameter. The second actually uses the container to create objects.
public class ChildContainerSpecimenBuilder : ISpecimenBuilder
{
private readonly IUnityContainer container;
public ChildContainerSpecimenBuilder(IUnityContainer container)
{
this.container = container;
}
public object Create(object request, ISpecimenContext context)
{
Type type = request as Type;
if (type == null || type != typeof(IUnityContainer))
{
return new NoSpecimen();
}
return this.container.CreateChildContainer();
}
}
public class ContainerSpecimenBuilder : ISpecimenBuilder
{
private readonly IUnityContainer container;
public ContainerSpecimenBuilder(IUnityContainer container)
{
this.container = container;
}
public object Create(object request, ISpecimenContext context)
{
Type type = request as Type;
if (type == null)
{
return new NoSpecimen();
}
return this.container.Resolve(type);
}
}
The NoSpecimen class is AutoFixture’s way of telling its kernel that this builder can’t construct an object for the current request. Something like a NullObject.
Well and that’s it. A couple of dozen lines of code. A superior testing framework (xUnit). A convenient way of creating test data (AutoFixture). A DI container (which should be mandatory for any project if you ask me…). And writing maintainable tests for the correct behavior of your code becomes a piece of cake. I love it! 🙂
You can find the sample code on my playground on CodePlex (solution TecX.Playground, project TecX.BehavioralTesting).
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