Adam Bien's Weblog
Are Naming Conventions For JUnit 4+ Still Needed?
JUnit 3 used naming conventions for the identification of test methods. JUnit 4 uses annotations for that purpose, so that the prefix "test" is actually superfluous. It is not only superfluous, but also redundant.
Instead writing something like:
@Test
public void testAverageTotalStartedThreadCount() {}
you could just skip the prefix "test" and go with the annotation only:
@Test
public void averageTotalStartedThreadCount() {}
The "test" prefixes are still generated by Eclipse and NetBeans, so if you don't like the superfluous naming, you will have to remove it manually. The "test" prefix in the test-class name, however, is still useful. It makes the search for test classes more easy.
Posted at 09:00AM Nov 19, 2009 by Adam Bien in Real World Java EE Patterns - Rethinking Best Practices | Kommentare[10]
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Take it even one step further and use "should" with given-when-then:
http://paulszulc.wordpress.com/2009/05/23/test-template-you-should-always-use/
Gesendet von Mateusz am November 19, 2009 at 10:33 AM CET #
A test is a specification. I use very descriptive names for my methods, and dropped Test long ago.
For example
given_valid_credentials_login_should_redirect_to_home_page
and when using a BDD framework, this becomes more explicit.
Gesendet von Hadi Hariri am November 19, 2009 at 11:11 AM CET #
I don't prefix with "test" any more, it's superfluous and makes the test names harder to read.
Gesendet von Matthew Churcher am November 19, 2009 at 11:16 AM CET #
The "test" prefix is a convention - not a rule. It can/should be used where it is applicable, readability and comprehensibility should be the goal, not unconventionality at any price.
Gesendet von jiai am November 19, 2009 at 06:40 PM CET #
I still haven't seen any advantages to upgrading all my java projects to Junit 4 however. The @ adds an extra character.
Gesendet von Ravi am November 20, 2009 at 08:40 AM CET #
@Jiai,
I agree with you regarding the conventions.
But: In JUnit 4+ we have already the @Test annotation it should be enough for mark test classes.
thanks!,
adam
Gesendet von Adam Bien am November 20, 2009 at 11:56 AM CET #
@Ravi,
Junit 4+ brings other goodness like assertThat, hamcrest and timeout. These are the actual reasons for upgrade..
thanks for your comment!,
adam
Gesendet von Adam Bien am November 20, 2009 at 11:57 AM CET #
I swear I used a version of NetBeans did this for the auto-generated code (maybe a beta?)... and then it was removed.
The problem I encountered is testing methods that are defined on both the class you wish to test and a super class of your test. For a concrete example, the test will inherit from java.lang.Object and thus you may want to test the equals or hashCode methods of your target class, which leads to problems with the auto-generated code.
Of course, is it better to have uniformity by having all tests prefixed with "test" or better to deal with the special case of methods on java.lang.Object and rename them? I prefer having the auto-generated method names actually work, so I'll stick with the test prefix.
Gesendet von JB am November 20, 2009 at 05:37 PM CET #
Edit: I'm sorry, I meant hashCode and toString, not equals. It is the methods that have zero arguments and a non-void return type that cause the problem.
Gesendet von JB am November 20, 2009 at 05:47 PM CET #
The problem is that there are still tools using JUnit that have a problem with it. AFAIK there's no info on how to configure ant or Emma to cope with JUnit4 way of writing tests.
Gesendet von Pawel Badenski am November 23, 2009 at 12:21 AM CET #