Re: [Asunit-users] ASUnit mock type isolated behavior design

[Luke B. <lb...@pa...>]

Hey Bop,

Like most everything else, mocks are kind of a big subject, and well, "it
depends."

If you're trying to write tests that verify behavior that is defined in a
code behind that is associated with (and depends on) those symbols, I'm not
sure how well mocks would help.

If you have separated out your application logic in such a way that the
symbols are truly just basic MovieClips with some assets in them, you should
definitely be able to use any old MovieClip instance in their place.

If you do have this kind of separation, you should consider using Flex
Builder or MXMLC as your compiler, and then your FLA file will *only* have
symbols in it, and your development environment will better support your
efforts.

Here is some info on how that might be done:
http://www.bit-101.com/blog/?p=853

I can tell you with confidence that writing code in Flex Builder is
unbelievably more enjoyable than it ever will be with Flash Authoring. of
course, the trade off comes in when you want to start creating simple,
quick, time line-driven animations. You can still do this, but you have to
write code to control them. Folks may not know this, but Flex Builder is
perfectly appropriate for ActionScript only projects - you don't *have* to
use the Flex Framework in order to get the benefits of Flex Builder. You
wouldn't believe the kind of haggling Ali and I had to get into with
marketing/product folks over at Macromedia about including this very
feature!

In closing, yes - mocks could be helpful, so long as you're not mocking the
very features that you want to test!


Luke Bayes
http://www.asserttrue.com


PS:

Here's a good article about the differences between testing 'behavior' and
testing 'state'
http://martinfowler.com/articles/mocksArentStubs.html