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Tim
Tim

Reputation: 4813

Best Practice -- Unit test dependencies

This is a best practice question.

I'm maintaining a web application which is a proxy around another web application whose source code I do not have access to. My project's function is to make the other server's API easy to use and mobile friendly.

I'm in the process of adding unit tests and I find myself wanting to break standard best practices like Tests should be independent.

To test login, I first need to register. If register fails, login would fail (or be pointless.) What is the best way to handle this? Using a setUp function to register and then fail login because the expected user is missing? Or enforce strict test ordering and make sure register is called first?

I tend to lean towards using a setUp function, but I'd be curious to know what the community thinks.

The test framework is JUnit, although I imagine this question would apply to other frameworks.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 96

Answers (1)

Jeremy Stein
Jeremy Stein

Reputation: 19661

You're describing integration tests, not unit tests. Unit tests simulate dependencies and exercise a single class. It's not necessary to register first because you mock the results of a successful registration (if necessary, depending on your class design).

For the integration tests, yes, you would have a complicated setup. If that's too slow to run each time, you may find it easier to create a single test that performs a number of tests each dependent on the previous tests.

Upvotes: 1

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