Intoduction to Unit Testing

Using JUnit to structure Unit Testing

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Dr. Mark L. Hornick
How did you test your code?

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Dr. Mark L. Hornick
 How can you test your app?
 Run the app with inputs that should produce a known
output, and verify the actual output
One problem with this approach may be that you can’t make
your app accept “bad” inputs; thus you may not be able to force
all possible if-then-else blocks of the app’s classes’ methods to
execute

 Write a separate “test” program that is designed to

exercise the classes and methods of the “production”
app
A problem with this might be gathering the results of the
exercises and determining whether each one passed or failed.

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Dr. Mark L. Hornick
What is Unit Testing?
 Creating special-purpose test code that exercises
specific classes of your application is called Unit
Testing
 Unit Testing is also known as “Class Testing”
 Such test code usually exercises one method of a
class at a time whenever possible.
 The tests usually include exercising the methods
in “boundary conditions” by force-feeding the
methods “bad” arguments, such as nulls.

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Dr. Mark L. Hornick
Naïve Demo

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Dr. Mark L. Hornick
What is JUnit?
 JUnit is an open source Java testing framework used to write
and run repeatable tests.

 It is built into Eclipse (and ItelliJ etc)

 JUnit is designed to automatically call “test” methods that in

turn test the “real” code.
 It can compare actual results the “test” received from a real method vs.
the results it expected, and report deviations.
 It does not guarantee that the methods it calls actually perform
meaningful tests
 You must write meaningful tests
 You must write “enough” tests to cover all possible situations

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Dr. Mark L. Hornick
What are some limitations of
JUnit testing?
 Not well-suited for testing user interfaces (other
approaches are needed)
 Does not ensure that all code is actually tested
(other tools are needed to measure code
coverage)
 Is not well-suited for testing an entire application
 Complexities related to testing private methods

These topics are covered in more detail in SE2832

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Dr. Mark L. Hornick
Demonstration

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Dr. Mark L. Hornick