Should I write integration test or unit test? - automated-tests

I have a function which saves photos(stored in database,app gives user option to save in a directory) to a given directory.Now, this was not working correctly.I just fixed it.Now, should I write unit test or integration test for the function?

For your case, you want to write an integration test to cover the scenario you mention. I have a full post on this topic. However, here's a summarized version specific to your question:
In his book The Art of Unit Testing, Roy Osherove describes a key principle that a unit test must be “trustworthy”. On the surface, this seems fairly obvious. However, this underlying highlights some of the key differences between a unit test vs an integration test.
With a trustworthy test, you must be able trust the results 100% of the time. If the test fails, you want to be certain that the code is broken and must be fixed. You shouldn’t have to ask things like “Was the database down?”, “Was the connection string OK?”, “Was the stored procedure modified?”. By asking these questions, it shows that you aren't able to trust the results and you likely have a poorly designed “unit test”.
As your scenario describes a situation with similar multiple dependencies, you want to cover it with a integration test. Again, for more details, see my full post here as well.
Good luck!

Integration tests and unit tests have different scopes and purposes:
Unit tests test small pieces of code (like a function) in isolation from the rest of the program, ideally covering all possible edge cases (like exceptions, null parameters, etc.)
Integration tests test an entire application from a use case point of view. They can never cover all edge cases, but they can catch problems with the interaction between parts of the code and the glue code that joins them together which unit tests often miss
For a singe function, you can really only have a unit test, and you should. But you could also have an integration test that shows that when the user presses a certain button, a photo is written into the directory, and can be opened in the program as well.

Integration tests help you to validate if your software is working properly.
Unit tests help you to find why your software is breaking.
Unit tests to some extent also contribute to the first goal. Plus it has a couple of advantages:
It's generally way cheaper to write and run a unit test with a much smaller scope.
It's easier to get coverage for the combinatoric explosion of states of you components using unit tests than an integration test. Say you have a setup involving three components. Each of them has 3 different states. Then integration testing the entire setup would involve checking 3 * 3 * 3 = 27 conditions. Unit testing the individual components would require testing 3 + 3 + 3 = 9 conditions. (This is oversimplified, but you will hopefully see the point.)
Because of this, unit tests are generally more popular than integration tests. However, you really cannot do without integration tests. Integration tests should be the cornerstone used for acceptance of your software. Having unit tests only just proves that you have a bunch of stuff doing something. An integration test proves that you have working software.

Some people would call a test for a DAO an integration test; others would say it's a unit test.
Whatever you call it, I'd say you should have a unit test for all the DAO functionality and an integration test for the front-to-back behavior embodied in the use case that says "give the user the option to save to the file system." I'd have integration tests for both scenarios, since it sounds like both are possible in your system.

I think it depends on the source of your problem.
If the function itself may have some problems in different scenarios you can have unit tests to test this scenarios over your function.
If integration of your function and other parts of your program may cause some problems you should think of an integration test.
Sometimes a function like yours may need some external resources to do its job it's not a bad idea to have some unit tests to see what will happen if some of these resources are not available

Related

How to approach writing developer tests (unit tests, integration tests, etc) for a system?

I have a WCF service which runs and interacts with database, file system and few external web services, then creates the result and Xml Serialize it and returns it finally.
I'd like to write tests for this solution and I'm thinking how (it's all using dependency injection and design by contract).
There are 3 main approaches I can take.
1) I can pick smallest units of codes/methods and write tests for it. Pick one class and isolate it from its dependencies (other classes, etc). Although it guarantees quality but it takes lots of time writing them and that's slow.
2) Only make the interaction with external systems mockable and write some tests that cover the main scenarios from when the request is made until the response is serialized and returned. This will test all the interactions between my classes but mocks all external resource accesses.
3) I can setup a test environment where the interaction with external web services do happen, file access happens, database access happens, etc. Then writing the tests from end to end. this requires environmental setup and dependency on all other systems to be up and running.
About #1, I see no point in investing the time/money/energy on writing the tests for every single method or codes that I have. I mean it's a waste of time.
About #3, since it has dependency on external resources/systems, it's hard to set it up and running.
#2, sounds to be the best option to me. Since it will test what it should be testing. Only my system and all its classes and mocking all other external systems.
So basically, my conclusion after some years experience with unit tests is that writing unit tests is a waste to be avoided and instead isolated system tests are best return on investment.
Even if I was going to write the tests first (TDD) then the production code, still #2 I think would be best.
What's your view on this? would you write small unit tests for your application? would you consider it a good practice and best use of time/budget/energy?
If you want to talk about quality, you should have all 3:
Unit tests to ensure your code does what you think it does, expose any edge cases and help with regression. You (developer) should write such tests.
Integration tests to verify correctness of entire process, whether components talk to each other correctly and so on. And again, you as a developer write such tests.
System-wide tests in production-like environment (with some limitations naturally - you might not have access to client database, but you should have its exact copy on your local machines). Those tests are usually written by dedicated testers (often in programming languages different from application code), but of course can be written by you.
Second and third type of tests (integration and system) will be way too much effort to test edge cases of smaller components. This is what you usually want unit tests for. You need integration because something might fail on hooking-up of tested, verified and correct modules. And of course system tests is what you do daily, during development, or have assigned people (manual testers) do it.
Going for selected type of tests from the list might work to some point, but is far from complete solution or quality software.
All 3 are important and targeted at different test types that is a matrix of unit/integration/system categories with positive and negative testing in each category.
For code coverage Unit testing will yield the highest percentage, followed by Integration then System.
You also need to consider whether or not the purpose of the test is Validation (will meet the final user\customer requirements, i.e Value) or Verification (written to specification, i.e. Correct).
In summary the answer is 'it depends', and I would recommend following the SEI CMMi model for Verification and Validation (i.e. testing) which begins with the goals (value) of each activity then subjecting that activity to measures that will ultimately allow the whole process to be subjected to continuous improvement. In this way you have isolated the What and Why from the How and you will be able to answer time and value type questions for your given environment (which could be a Life support System or a Tweet of the day, to your favorite Aunt, App).
Summary: #2 (integration testing) seems most logical, but you shouldn't hesitate to use a variety of tests to achieve the best coverage for pieces of your codebase that need it most. Shooting for having tests for "everything" is not a worthy goal.
Long version
There is a school of thought out there where devs are convinced that adopting unit\integration\system tests means striving for every single chuck of code being tested. It's either no test coverage at all, or committing to testing "everything". This binary thinking always makes adopting any kind of testing strategy seem very expensive.
The truth is, forcing every single line of code\function\module to be tested is about as sound as writing all your code to be as fast as possible. It takes too much time and effort, and most of it nets very little return. Another truth is that you can never achieve true 100% coverage in a non-trivial project.
Testing is not a goal unto itself. It's a means to achieve other things: final product quality, maintainability, interoperability, and so on, all while expending the least amount of effort possible.
With that in mind, step back and evaluate your particular circumstances. Why do you want to "write tests for this solution"? Are you unhappy with the overall quality of the project today? Have you experienced high regression rates? Are you perhaps unsure about how some module works (and more importantly, what bugs it might have)? Regardless of what your exact goal is, you should be able to select pieces that pose particular challenges and focus your attention on them. Depending on what those pieces are, an appropriate testing approach can be selected.
If you have a particularly tricky function or a class, consider unit testing them. If you're faced with a complicated architecture with multiple, hard to understand interactions, consider writing integration tests to establish a clean baseline for your trickiest scenarios and to better understand where the problems are coming from (you'll probably flush out some bugs along the way). System testing can help if your concerns are not addressed in more localized tests.
Based on the information you provided for your particular scenario, external-facing unit testing\integration testing (#2) looks most promising. It seems like you have a lot of external dependencies, so I'd guess this is where most of the complexity hides. Comprehensive unit testing (#1) is a superset of #2, with all the extra internal stuff carrying questionable value. #3 (full system testing) will probably not allow you to test external edge cases\error conditions as well as you would like.

What is the point of Unit Testing

I have been looking at the unit testing topic and honestly I have never yet seen it in a live application.
Im a little foggy on the subject....
A simple example is if I am populating a listbox with data, I would know through debugging if the data is being populated and if it wasnt it would probably be easy to figure out why. Futhermore I couldnt possibly put it in production if it wasnt work so, why would I need to do a unit test? I dont see the point of it.
What if you were working on an entirely different area of the site, but because of the way your code was constructed, the changes you made broke the code that fills the listbox with data? How long would it take you to discover that? Worse, what if it was someone else on the team who made such a change; someone who had no idea how the listbox-filling code worked at all? Or even someone who didn't know there was code to fill listboxes?
Unit testing gives you a set of tests that ensure you never regress and introduce bugs in areas of your program that have already been proven to work, because you run the unit tests after every change and refactoring. Unit testing lets you program without fear.
Furthermore, by designing your code to be testable, you necessarily create a loosely-coupled architecture that follows a large list of best practices, e.g. dependency injection.
The point is that by using unit tests you are sure that each class is working as intended.
What is the value of that, apart from knowing that it works under certain conditions?
When you refactor your code, change the design, rework a (supposedly) unrelated piece of code, if your tests still run correctly you know your have not broken any functionality.
Unit testing is both about ensuring that the code you write conforms to your expectations and that any changes to it still conform to them.
There're many pros and cons with using Testing. Take a look at Art Of Unit Testing somehow, this book greatly covers subjects of unit testing. Also, you can find out why you should do unit testing.
In your example, imagine you had to check populating of listbox, combobox and other data at about on 15 web pages. How much browser reload, mouse clicks, breakpoint hits and runs should you have to make to test it with debug? Many. But with unit testing, one of the core rules is that tests should be run simply, by single click. If you design unit tests correctly, you can test thousands and thousands of code with the single click
Unit testing will give you an opportunity to test your logic without hitting the sql server and firing Cassini or IIS Express. (Of course you need to implement dependency injection firstly on your main project and mock them on your test application)
Think about you have written hundreds of test methods. And you will run all the test methods in bulk. This could take a minutes and more depending on your data structure. Buy if you implement dependency injection on your project and mock them in your test, this will take quite a small time.
here is a source which you could find a good article on dependency injection : http://haacked.com/archive/2007/12/07/tdd-and-dependency-injection-with-asp.net-mvc.aspx
this my reason of using unit testing. if your project is really big enough, I think your should also consider Test-driven development (TDD)

Project nearing completion. Time to begin testing. Which methods are feasible towards the end of the development cycle?

Let's assume one joins a project near the end of its development cycle. The project has been passed on across many teams and has been an overall free-for-all with no testing whatsoever taking place along the whole time. The other members on this team have no knowledge of testing (shame!) and unit testing each method seems infeasible at this point.
What would the recommended strategy for testing a product be at this point, besides usability testing? Is this normally the point where you're stuck with manual point-and-click expected output/actual output work?
I typically take a bottom-up approach to testing, but I think in this case you want to go top-down. Test the biggest components you can wrap unit-tests around and see how they fail. Those failures should point you towards what sub-components need tests of their own. You'll have a pretty spotty test suite when this is done, but it's a start.
If you have the budget for it, get a testing automation suite. HP/Mercury QuickTest is the leader in this space, but is very expensive. The idea is that you record test cases like macros by driving your GUI through use cases. You fill out inputs on a form (web, .net, swing, pretty much any sort of GUI), the engine learns the form elements names. Then you can check for expected output on the GUI and in the db. Then you can plug in a table or spreadsheet of various test inputs, including invalid cases where it should fail and run it through hundreds of scenarios if you like. After the tests are recorded, you can also edit the generated scripts to customize them. It builds a neat report for you in the end showing you exactly what failed.
There are also some cheap and free GUI automation testing suites that do pretty much the same thing but with fewer features. In general the more expensive the suite, the less manual customizition is necessary. Check out this list: http://www.testingfaqs.org/t-gui.html
I think this is where a good Quality Assurance test would come in. Write out old fashioned test cases and hand out to multiple people on the team to test.
What would the recommended strategy for testing a product be at this point, besides usability testing?
I'd recommend code inspection, by someone/people who know (or who can develop) the product's functional specification.
An extreme, purist way would be to say that, because it "has been an overall free-for-all with no testing whatsoever", therefore one can't trust any of it: not the existing testing, nor the code, nor the developers, nor the development process, nor management, nothing about the project. Furthermore, testing doesn't add quality to software (quality has to be built-in, part of the development process). The only way to have a quality product is to build a quality product; this product had no quality in its build, and therefore one needs to rebuild it:
Treat the existing source code as a throw-away prototype or documentation
Build a new product piece-by-piece, optionally incorporating suitable fragments (if any) of the old source code.
But doing code inspection (and correcting defects found via code inspection) might be quicker. That would be in addition to functional testing.
Whether or not you'll want to not only test it but also spend the extra time effort to develop automated tests depends on whether you'll want to maintain the software (i.e., in the future, to change it in any way and then retest it).
You'll also need:
Either:
Knowledge of the functional specification (and non-functional specification)
Developers and/or QA people with a clue
Or:
A small, simple product
Patient, forgiving end-users
Continuing technical support after the product is delivered
One technique that I incorporate into my development practice when entering a project at this time in the lifecycle is to add unit tests as defects are reported (by QA or end users). You won't get full code coverage of the existing code base, but at least this way future development can be driven and documented by tests. Also this way you should be assured that your tests fail before working on the implementation. If you write the test and it doesn't fail, the test is faulty.
Additionally, as you add new functionality to the system, start those with tests so that at least those sub-systems are tested. As the new systems interact with existing, try adding tests around the old boundary layers and work your way in over time. While these won't be Unit tests, these integration tests are better than nothing.
Refactoring is yet another prime target for testing. Refactoring without tests is like walking a tight rope without a net. You may get to the other side successfully, but is the risk worth the reward?

Code Coverage generic functions/parameters?

I am working on some code coverage for my applications. Now, I know that code coverage is an activity linked to the type of tests that you create and the language for which you wish to do the code coverage.
My question is: Is there any possible way to do some generic code coverage? Like in, can we have a set of features/test cases, which can be run (along with a lot more specific tests for the application under test) to get the code coverage for say 10% or more of the code?
More like, if I wish to build a framework for code coverage, what is the best possible way to go about making a generic one? Is it possible to have some functionality automated or generalized?
I'm not sure that generic coverage tools are the holy grail, for a couple of reasons:
Coverage is not a goal, it's an instrument. It tells you which parts of the code are not entirely hit by a test. It does not say anything about how good the tests are.
Generated tests can not guess the semantics of your code. Frameworks that generate tests for you only can deduct meaning from reading your code, which in essence could be wrong, because the whole point of unittesting is to see if the code actually behaves like you intended it too.
Because the automated framework will generate artificial coverage, you can never tell wether a piece of code is tested with a proper unittest, or superficially tested by a framework. I'd rather have untested code show up as uncovered, so I fix that.
What you could do (and I've done ;-) ) is write a generic test for testing Java beans. By reflection, you can test a Java bean against the Sun spec of a Java bean. Assert that equals and hashcode are both implemented (or neither of them), see that the getter actually returns the value you pushed in with the setter, check wether all properties have getters and setters.
You can do the same basic trick for anything that implements "comparable" for instance.
It's easy to do, easy to maintain and forces you to have clean beans. As for the rest of the unittests, I try to focus on getting important parts tested first and thouroughly.
Coverage can give a false sense of security. Common sense can not be automated.
This is usually achieved by combining static code analysis (Coverity, Klockwork or their free analogs) with dynamic analysis by running a tests against instrumented application (profiler + memory checker). Unfortunately, this is hard to automate test algorythms, most tools are kind of "recorders" able to record traffic/keys/signals - depending on domain and replay them (with minimal changes/substitutions like session ID/user/etc)

What's the point of automated integration test here?

Yes, I did read the 'Related Questions' in the box above after I typed this =). They still didn't help me as much as I'd like, as I understand what the difference between the two are - I'm just not sure if I need it in my specific case.
So I have a fully unit tested (simple & small) application. I have some 'Job' class with a single public Run() method + ctors which takes in an Excel spreadsheet as parameter, extracts the data, checks the database to see if we already have that data, and if not, makes a request to a third party vendor, takes that response, puts it in the database and then completes the job (db update again)
I have IConnection to talk to vendor, IParser to parse excel/vendor files, IDataAccess to do all database access. My Job class is lean & mean and doesnt do much logic, even though in reality it is doing all of the logic, it's really just 'chaining along' data through to the composite objects...
So all the composite objects are unit tested themselves, including the DAL, and even my Run() method on the Job class is unit tested fully using mocks for all possible code paths..
So - do I need to do any type of integration test at this point, other then run the app to see if it works? Is my test(s) of the Run() method with mocks considered my integration test(s)? Or should my integration test use real instances instead of mocks, and then Assert database values at the end, based on known excel spreadsheet input? But that's what all my unit tests are doing already (just in seperate places, and the mocked Run test makes sure those places 'connect')! Following the DRY methodology, I just don't see a need to do an integration test here...
Am I missing something obvious guys? Many thanks again...
I think the biggest thing you're missing is the actual behaviour of your external systems. While your unit tests may certainly assert that the individual steps perform the expected action, they do little to reveal the run-time issues that may arise when accessing external systems. Your external systems may also contain data you do not know about.
So yes, I think you need both. You do not necessarily need to be equally detailed in both tests. Sometimes you can just let the integration test be a smoke test

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