Comments on: Unit Testing Flex – What’s stopping you?

By: Javier

Javier — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:47:31 +0000

I think the point of Unit testing is missed by some of the comments here. Unit testing is not about finding bugs in the code like this article says: http://blog.codeville.net/2009/08/24/writing-great-unit-tests-best-and-worst-practises/. It’s actually a “tool”, a blue-print if you like, of what your code should do…that is why unit test are written before any code is created…it’s like our professors always said: before you write any code, put it down on paper” -> same idea, different method.

By: Shanon

Shanon — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 09:41:11 +0000

@Stan
I’m more than happy to help out, I haven’t used Cairngorm myself but if you can give me an example of what parts you are finding difficult or you can point me in the right direction I’ll see what I can come up with

By: Kris

Kris — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 20:27:30 +0000

Try mockito-flex if you need to mock anything. It won’t give you hangover and it tastes really well: http://bitbucket.org/loomis/mockito-flex/

By: Stan Berka

Stan Berka — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 22:54:43 +0000

I’m 100% for unit testing. And FlexUnit 4 is a great tool. However, to apply it to Cairngorm architecture, which is mandatory in our shop, is a challenge. There is very little on this topic. If you can help to any degree in this direction, I’d really appreciate it.

By: Shanon

Shanon — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 03:42:04 +0000

@Darren
Thanks for your comment. I won’t argue with you that there is a cost associated with unit testing. However I will say that regardless of how perfect your code is you will always have to test it before you release it. I used to spend a lot of time manually testing my code, now I spend that time writing automated tests.

If you don’t see unit testing ever becoming part of your day to day development there is nothing wrong with that. However I challenge you the next time you discover a bug in your production code to see if you can write a unit test that identifies it

By: Darren

Darren — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 02:38:09 +0000

Looks like I didn’t strictly validate the word ‘strictly’ in the above comment

By: Darren

Darren — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 02:36:46 +0000

Surely, unit-testing is a development time/code quality tradeoff. Having read some of your examples now, it doesn’t seem like it’s worth the cost in development time for GUI components, or, in most cases, Flex in general. Flex is by definition a client-side technology. You should never, ever trust the client so before anything is committed to the database on the server-side it should be strcitly validated and checked for errors (unit testing makes sense here). Should you compromise on code-quality (for GUIs)? Yes, I think it’s acceptable if it means development time will be much less. Just get good at programming and there shouldn’t be many bugs to start with. Structure your code well and the bugs that are found will be easy to isolate and fix.

Think of it like this. You’re a journalist for the NY Times. All your work is checked by two editors. Once every couple of months a typo or two makes it through. Does this mean that all your work should now be checked by four editors? I don’t think so…

By: Shanon

Shanon — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 03:46:24 +0000

That’s a great idea Danny, I think more knowledge about mocking in flex/actionscript is one area that everyone including myself could benefit from.

By: DannyT

DannyT — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 19:21:32 +0000

Definitely options for mocks and test data would be of interest, great idea to start sharing experiences and I think your timing is perfect as I think alot of Flex devs are ever-increasingly aware they perhaps should be unit testing but definitely has a somewhat elitist or black magic perception in the community.

By: johnny

johnny — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 04:11:23 +0000

It prooves your code work ;p