Ed Bartram talks about “Assert Control Over Your Legacy Applications (TestBox Quick Start)” in this episode of ColdFusion Alive podcast with host Michaela Light.

"Unit tests are typically testing the logic within a particular method or group of methods and not anything else that those methods are and that includes external dependencies such as a database. So what we do is we write integration tests which are structured much like unit test to test those external dependencies to make sure that the code that you have that's making those calls out actually work correctly without error and then you can even in the case of database calls insert records into it in order to do your unit tests against let's say, read function to make sure that it's coming back correctly so it's doing what you intended it to do." - Ed Bartam

Show notes

Why unit test?

A unit is a method, function or small group of same

Why do it?

Refactoring is safer

improving quality and reliability of their application

Faster finding bugs when you change code

Better deployment during your build process

What is integration testing

Testing logic vs testing external dependencies

Functional tests with Selenium

What TestBox?

A test creation framework and scripting language

Set up - before test suite is run

Tear down - after test suite is run

Before unit test is run

After unit test is run

Automated vs manual testing

Good automated testing characteristics

Repeatable

Can be run at push of a button

One test

A suite of tests

All unit tests

Works with CI (eg Jenkins or Ant) so tests are run during your build process automatically

Consistent test results independent of the environment (eg database)

Full coverage of all code in the unit

Independent of other tests - can be run in random order - no dependencies between tests

Easy to detect if an error occurs and report on it so you can

Test setup and tear down of dependencies

TestBox does all the above

Need to move code to methods or functions

TestBox tips and best practices

What tests to write

How to name them

Test_[method name]_[When to test]_[Expected enresult]

How to write them

When to write them

TestBox color coding

Tests that pass - Green

Test that fail - Yellow

Test that errors out - Red

Result actions

CI backout the deployment

Slack

Email

Ring a bell via a Raspberry Pi

Who broke the build gets to wear a special hat for rest the day

Free open source

Doesn’t require ColdBox

Paid support is available

CFML slack testing channel

Replaces mxUnit

Mocking and MockBox

Spies and Stubs too

Blackbox unwritten code

Design patterns

What is a legacy application?

Michael Feather book working effectively with legacy code

Test Driven Development (TDD)

Write a little bit of your test before your code

Then write a little bit of code to pass the test

Repeat

Know as “Red-Green testing”

How to install TestBox quickly in your existing environment

CommandBox one line install of TestBox

Or download and manually install

How do we improve our code coverage then?

which prescribes writing tests and then writing code to make those tests pass.

Start with current bugs you are working on fixing

First pull out the queries into methods and writer tests for them

Second pull out logic into methods and write logic

Could move to MVC - but not required

CFMs = views and controller

CFCs = model

Why CFers resist writing tests

Takes too long to writer

Too hard to write tests

Too late to write tests for existing code

Why are you proud to use CF?

WWIT to make CF more alive this year?

What are you looking forward to at Into the Box?

Mentioned in this episode