The fundamentals of unit testing (series)

I’ve not written about testing for a while, but I still enjoy writing automated tests (I am boring) and trying to coach people on good testing practices (I am boring), so hopefully this series will be a useful refresher.

I plan to write roughly ~15 posts on the fundamentals of good unit testing. By good, I mean useful, trustworthy and maintainable. These tips are for new through to intermediate developers; they’re not designed to catch the attention of seasoned automated testers, but there may be the odd nugget that’s useful for older hands.

Here’s the list of things I’m going to cover (I’ll update the links as I add ‘em):

Overview:

• It’s a skill

General principles to strive for:

• Narrow & focussed
• Correct
• Atomic
• Repeatable
• Isolated
• Thorough

General testing tips:

• Arrange, Act, Assert
• Spring the trap
• Descriptive naming schemes
• Draw attention to ‘interesting’ values
• Factory methods
• Setup structure
• Tests shouldn’t ape the production code
• KISS
• Data-Driven testing (same logic, different inputs)