TestNG gets a full book chapter

I was happy to discover that TestNG is now covered in a full chapter of the book Beginning POJOs by Brian Sam-Bodden.

The author puts aside JUnit, and introduces the reader to TestNG concepts. After a concise intro, the author builds more complex tests integrating DbUnit and EasyMock (as you may already know EasyMock 2 is already JUnit-free; in previous posts I have started posting ideas about a JUnit-free JMock).

Regarding the examples provided in the book, I have a single remark: having in mind that building a Hibernate SessionFactory is considered an expensive operation, I would use other mechanisms from TestNG that may help running the tests more quickly (by guaranteeing that the SessionFactory is created/initialized only once): @BeforeGroup (guaranteed to run once before a named group of tests), @BeforeTest (which is guaranteed to run once before the tests) or @BeforeSuite (running once before the whole suite).

category: Software Testing, Testing, TestNG, EasyMock

More on JMock and TestNG

Firstly, I would like to provide a small fix to the code provided in the previous entry: JMock for TestNG (or JUnit-free JMock)

/**
* Verify the expected behavior for the mocks registered by the current thread and
* also releases them.
*/
public static synchronized void verifyAndRelease() {
   Thread currentThread= Thread.currentThread();
   List mocks = s_mockObjects.get(currentThread);
   if(null != mocks) {
       try {
           for(Verifiable verifiable : mocks) {
               verifiable.verify();
           }
       finally {
           // make sure the mocks are released
           mocks.clear();
           s_mockObjects.put(currentThread, null);
       }
   }
}

The fix assures that even if the verification of a mock fails, the current mocks are released and will not remain around till the next test.

I have started to completely free JMock of its JUnit “addiction”. I have found three types of dependencies:

• classes in the hierarchy of org.junit.TestCase (3). These can be completely replaced by the class I have already posted
• usage of org.junit.AssertionFailureException. Having in mind that TestNG works for JVM 1.4+, we have directly used the java.lang.AssertError, and I am thinking to do the same here
• a couple of classes extending org.junit.Assert (even if they aren’t using much of it). Considering that TestNG propose a more readable form for assertions through org.testng.Assert, this change is quite trivial

I can confess that these changes are already available on my machine and I am already using them. Me and Joe have been discussing about the possibility to integrate these changes directly in JMock. If this will not happen, than I will most probably include the code in TestNG.

A last point (one that I just get me burnt tonite), is that JMock doesn’t check (or I haven’t figured how to make it) the order of expectations, so from its perspective the following code is same correct (or wrong):

   [...]
   mock.expect(once()).method("methodOne");
   mock.expect(once()).methog("methodTwo");
   [...]
   mock.verify();

and

   [...]
   mock.expect(once()).method("methodTwo");
   mock.expect(once()).methog("methodOne");
   [...]
   mock.verify();

will both pass or fail disregarding the real order of invocation. I agree that in most of the cases, JMock behavior is enough good, but not having a way to force the order of invocation is in my opinion a missing feature. I am gonna try to add this feature to my code.

category: Software Testing, Testing, TestNG, JMock, EasyMock, JUnit