A Brief Introduction to Test- Driven Development Shawn M. Jones

Who am I? Graduated ODU in 1999 with BS in Computer Science Currently working on Master’s Degree in Computer Science Worked for Department of Navy since 1997: – Web Development – System Administration – Information Assurance (Computer Security) – Requirements Analysis – Application Development/Build Management – Never worked in QA or IV&V

Sources for this Presentation Beck, K. (2003). Test-Driven Development By Example. Boston: Addison-Wesley. Fowler, Martin. Refactoring. Osherove, R. (2012). “Write Maintainable Unit Tests That Will Save You Time and Tears”. MSDN Magazine. (2012) Cunningham & Cunningham. Personal Experience

What do you know about automated testing?

Why You Should Care About Automated Testing Automated testing allows you to check quickly if you have changed how the code behaves. Automated testing provides other developers an idea of how your functions/classes/libraries are intended to be used. Without automated tests, how do you know your code actually does what you intended? How much confidence do you have in it?

What do you know about TDD? TDD = Test Driven Development What else do you know?

Tools for TDD Testing framework: – JUnit (for Java) – NUnit (for.NET) – Unittest (for Python) – Roll your own, if necessary To-Do List Software Project

The Rhythm of Test-Driven Development (TDD) 1.Quickly add a test. 2.Run all tests and see the new one fail. 3.Make a little change. 4.Run all tests and see them all succeed. 5.Refactor to remove duplication.

The Rhythm of Test-Driven Development (TDD) Quickly add a test Run all tests and see the new one fail Make a little change Run all tests and see them all succeed Refactor to remove duplication

1. Quickly add a test Write the test before you write the code. This is hard for most of us, because we want to solve the functionality problem now. Think about how to best use the target code. How do you want to call that code?

2. Run all tests and see the new one fail Run the test, even if there is no target code for it yet. Failure is the expected behavior, it provides a known good starting point. What do you do if it passes when it shouldn’t? – There’s no target code yet, why is it passing? – Look at the test, is it a good test?

3. Make a little change Now you can write the target code to pass the test. We’re just focusing on the target code for this existing automated test. Anything else you can think of should be added to your to-do list.

4. Run all tests and see them all succeed Now you know that your code does what you wanted and you have a way to prove it in the future. If the code doesn’t pass the test, go fix it and come back to this step. Once it works, you have confidence in the code that you wrote.

5. Refactor to remove duplication Refactoring – “a disciplined technique for restructuring an existing body of code, altering its internal structure without changing its external behavior” – Martin Fowler Removing duplication ensures that future tests require fewer changes in the code, limiting dependency between modules (loosely coupled).

Why You Should Care About TDD TDD is not really just a testing strategy, it is a design strategy. Code with well-written tests tends to be more modular, loosely coupled, and easier to incorporate into the application. – This makes the code easier to maintain – It also makes the code more understandable to others

Why You Should Care About Better Code Remember, you will have to live with your code Six months from now you will remember far less about how it works, but you are still the expert for your code Your coworkers will appreciate you more; they have to live with your code, too

Excuses for not using TDD “No automated testing framework exists for the language/API/etc. in use” “Our application is mostly configuration files, with no real code.” “We’re just writing scripts, not real code” “TDD is only for classes. My code has no classes.” “I’m a developer, not a tester.” “Do you want us to produce functionality or tests?” “The existing application has no automated tests.”

When not to use TDD? Research for a new language/API/framework where you will throw away all of your research code. The language/OS has some construct that cannot be evaluated by an automated test (e.g. Console object in Java) You don’t have the hardware for testing the given requirement.

Issues with TDD Tests are additional code that must be maintained with the code User interfaces can be tested, but change often (use patterns such as MVC in order to limit how much code ends up in the UI) TDD requires management support; management may not believe testing is worthwhile

Other issues with TDD Use of TDD may cause the organization to believe other testing (functional, user experience, etc.) is not necessary The tests are only as good as the developer who wrote them (e.g. a developer unaware of SQL injection attacks will not check for them)

Questions?