Product Description

Unit testing, done right, can mean the diff erence between a failed project and a successful one, between a maintainable code base and a code base that no one dares touch, and between getting home at 2 AM or getting home in time for dinner, even before a release deadline.

The Art of Unit Testing builds on top of what's already been written about this important topic. It guides you step by step from simple tests to tests that are maintainable, readable, and trustworthy. It covers advanced subjects like mocks, stubs, and frameworks such as Typemock Isolator and Rhino Mocks. And you'll learn about advanced test patterns and organization, working with legacy code and even untestable code. The book discusses tools you need when testing databases and other technologies. It's written for .NET developers but others will also benefit from this book.

Table of Contents:

1. The basics of unit testing
2. A first unit test
3. Using stubs to break dependencies
4. Interaction testing using mock objects
5. Isolation (mock object) frameworks
6. Test hierarchies and organization
7. The pillars of good tests
8. Integrating unit testing into the organization
9. Working with legacy code

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22110 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
The chief architect at Typemock, Roy Osherove is one of the original ALT.NET organizers. He consults and trains teams worldwide on the gentle art of unit testing and test-driven development. He frequently speaks at international conferences such as TechEd and JAOO. Roy's blog is at ISerializable.com.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic for those new to Unit Testing
I thought this book was excellent, but it came to me 6 years too late! If you're just starting out down the unit testing/TDD route then I would highly recommend you get this book and give it a read. It's broken up into 4 parts, each part building on the concepts from the previous part.

The first part sets the arena for the rest of the book by providing concise definitions of what Unit and Integration tests are, as well as introducing the reader to the concept of Test Driven Development (TDD). Part 1 ends with chapter 2 that walks the reader through an example of putting together their first unit test.

The second part then starts looking at ways of making your code loosely coupled so that you can test more effectively and start using Fake objects. Roy does this by introducing the concept of Dependency Injection (DI), otherwise known as Inversion of Control (IoC), and then how you can utilise DI to make use of Stub and Mock objects in your tests. The second part ends with the introduction of Isolation Frameworks and looks at how they can ease the complexity of using Stubs and Mocks in your Unit Tests.

The third part then starts moving in to the more practical side of Unit testing now that the groundwork has been established in the first 2 parts. Roy takes the reader through the various patterns that can be used for test classes and how you can utilise them in a Test Hierarchy. Roy highlights that a Automated Build process is essential for running your test regularly to pick up any breaking changes that may have occurred in your application. Chapter 7 then moves onto the critical area of how to write tests that are maintainable, trustworthy and readable.

The final part is aimed at the the devs out there who are coming from existing organisations that don't do Unit Testing, but want to introduce it, or have started Unit Testing in their new app, but want to start Unit Testing their legacy code. Roy provides some good pointers on how to get Unit Testing accepted by teams less than eager to pursue new practices :)

The book also contains 2 appendices, one attempts to answer the question of how much testing should influence the design process and the second provides a good overview of the Isolation Frameworks, Tools and Test Frameworks currently available to make your life a little bit easier when you're testing.

Summary

If you're looking for a good book to get yourself, your fellow developers or team up to speed with good Unit Testing practices, then I'd highly recommend this book. If however you're a TDD guru, or have been unit testing for a while you probably won't get as much out of this as those who are new to Unit Testing.

Great for New/Novice Unit Testers
This is the summary taken from my full book review published here: http://bit.ly/b25iX

An excellent book, I would recommend it if:

* You are completely new to Unit Testing.
* You have been Unit Testing for a short while and looking to see what the next step for you is.

If you have been a hardcore TDD practitioner for years, then I would expect that this book is not for you since you would have likely hashed all the issues covered in the book.

There are a lot of great anecdotes in the book, many of which rang home with me and personal experience. Which (for me) just affirms that the content is good.

A real nice, relatively short read. Great job Roy!

New to unit testing? Check this out.
I have been 'playing' with Unit Tests for a couple of years now, and have never felt comfortable implanting them because I knew I wasn't doing it right, I was making silly mistakes (both design and implantation), but didn't know exactly what I should be doing to resolve this.

After reading this book I have a very clear vision of what's right and what's not. I is written in a very easy-to-understand way with clear examples and well reasoned explanations. It shows the novice (and not so novice) test writer how they should go about writing clear, reliable and maintainable tests. There is some really great advice to get the reader up and running in no time at all, and best of all, with the confidence that what they are writing will stand the test of time in any development environment.

It also make very clear how to implement stubs and mocks and what rôle they play in the testing environment.

A truly great read and very highly recomended.