CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2011/ch2 2e kt

Ruby Testing Frameworks

Mini::Test TG

Evolution of Mini::Test

Although Ruby’s Test::Unit has been used for years and is a favorite, (mostly due to its inclusion with the Ruby standard library) many Ruby developers felt the need for a more modern test infrastructure. This caused them to abandon Test::Unit and pull in additional test gems (e.g. rspec, shoulda, cucumber, etc.). With the new standard Mini::Test, however, this may be a thing of the past.

Mini::Test was created to be small, clean and fast. Test::Unit could be rather slow and contained some little-used features, such as test cases, GUI runners and some assertions. Mini::Test provides 90% of Test::Unit that people were using as well as some additional features.

Most of the assertions in Mini::Test are the same as those in its predecessor. The major difference is in the negative assertions. In Test::Unit where you have a assert_not_something, in Mini::Test you would use refute_something. (assert_not_raise and assert_not_throws are not available.)

Mini::Test provides the following assertions:

assert	assert_block	refute
assert_empty	assert_equal	refute_empty	refute_equal

Criteria

• IDE integration
• Test output detail
• Testing constructs available
• TDD or BDD
• Documentation
• Learning curve and ease of use

Framework Matrix

Framework	Website	Documentation	IDE Integration	Type	Ease of Use
Unit::Test
MiniTest::Unit

Demo Code

 class Account
   @balance
   @name
 
   attr_accessor :balance
   attr_accessor :name
 
   def initialize(amount)
     @balance = amount
   end
 
   def deposit(amount)
     @balance += amount
   end
 
   def addinterest(rate)
     @balance *= (1 + rate)
   end
 
   def withdrawal(amount)
     @balance -= amount
   end
 end

Test::Unit

 require "test/unit"
 require_relative("../Account.rb")
 
 class AccountTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
 
   def test_balance
     a = Account.new(100)
     assert_equal(100, a.balance())
   end
 
   def test_deposit 
     a = Account.new(100)
     assert_equal(200, a.deposit(100))
   end
   
   def test_withdrawal
     a = Account.new(100)
     assert_equal(50, a.withdrawal(50))
   end
   
   def test_name
     a = Account.new(100)
     a.name = "Checking"
     assert_not_nil(a.name())
   end
 
   def test_interest
     a = Account.new(100)
     assert_equal(a.addinterest(0.5), 150)
   end
 
   def test_fail
     a = Account.new(100)
     assert_equal(a.balance(), 200)
   end
 end

References

[1] http://ruby-toolbox.com/categories/testing_frameworks.html