Google Testing Blog: October 2014

GTAC 2014 is this Week!

Monday, October 27, 2014

by Anthony Vallone on behalf of the GTAC Committee speaker profileslive stream pageupdated parking information

Testing on the Toilet: Writing Descriptive Test Names

Thursday, October 16, 2014

by Andrew Trenk This article was adapted from a Google Testing on the Toilet (TotT) episode. You can download a printer-friendly version of this TotT episode and post it in your office. How long does it take you to figure out what behavior is being tested in the following code? @Test public void isUserLockedOut_invalidLogin() { authenticator.authenticate(username, invalidPassword); assertFalse(authenticator.isUserLockedOut(username)); authenticator.authenticate(username, invalidPassword); assertFalse(authenticator.isUserLockedOut(username)); authenticator.authenticate(username, invalidPassword); assertTrue(authenticator.isUserLockedOut(username)); }You probably had to read through every line of codehow long would it take you to figure out what behavior is being tested if the test had this name?isUserLockedOut_lockOutUserAfterThreeInvalidLoginAttempts
You should now be able to understand what behavior is being tested by reading just the test namePutting both the scenario and the expected outcome in the test name has several other benefits: If you want to know all the possible behaviors a class has, all you need to do is read through the test names in its test classBy giving tests more explicit names, it forces you to split up testing different behaviors into separate testsThe exact behavior being tested might not always be clear from the test codeYou can easily tell if some functionality isn’t being testedWhen a test fails, you can immediately see what functionality is broken without looking at the test’s source codeshouldLockOutUserAfterThreeInvalidLoginAttemptsMake sure test names contain both the scenario being tested and the expected outcome

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GTAC 2014 is this Week!

Testing on the Toilet: Writing Descriptive Test Names

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