[Junitdoclet-users] first-day experiences with JUnitDoclet

[Mike K. <mki...@al...>]

I'm now using JUnitDoclet, and I thought I'd share how my first day with it 
went.

I've summarized my setup issues in a previous message, but once it was 
installed, things went well!  I was able to generate, and regenerate, test 
cases (strictly StrutsTestCases combined with DBUnit this first day so I 
can't yet comment on the default template or default test cases).


The templating should really be improved.  The old "line-edit" method of 
numbered lines in a property file is very painful in this "day and age" of 
full-screen editors.  Fortunately, my years of experience on a vax mainframe 
with a dumb terminal gave me the necessary background to modify the 
template.

In some ways, it's probably handy to have all of the templating in one file, 
but I'd prefer to see it broken out into separate files and using a real 
templating engine (such as Velocity Template Engine 
http://jakarta.apache.org/velocity/ ) so we can have a lot more control of 
automated test case generation.


I'd also like to see the ability to have JUnitDoclet choose a template based 
on the Class superclass or the method signature, though.   Currently, in 
order to support a separate Struts Action test case template, I have to 
group all of my Struts Actions in the same package so I can specify which 
template based on the package name.  This goes against the idea than the 
test infrastructure shouldn't force changes to the application code layout.

Ie,

  <target name="junitdoclet.noactions" description="Generate non-action test 
cases" depends="compile">

    <javadoc

      packagenames    = "com.gvea.*"

      excludepackagenames = "com.gvea.struts.ebpp.actions.*"

      additionalparam = "-buildall">

    </javadoc>

  </target>



  <target name="junitdoclet.actions" description="Generate action test 
cases" depends="compile">

    <javadoc

      packagenames    = "com.gvea.struts.ebpp.actions.*"

      defaultexcludes = "yes"

      additionalparam = "-buildall -properties 
E:\Programming\Ebpp-struts\WEB-
INF\src\support\JUnitDoclet\templates\action.junitdoclet.properties">

    </javadoc>

  </target>



All in all, JUnitDoclet works well once setup.   I created 30 or so Struts 
action tests, discovered a few bugs in my code, and feel a lot better about 
the practicality of unit testing in general!

I do have one question about testVault (which runs during a test).  Is there 
a reason why it's named in such a way as to cause the code moved into 
testValue to execute during tests rather than being named "vault" or 
something else not tested?  

I'm gone for the weekend, but I'll be back Monday or Tuesday.   I'd be 
willing to help change the templating mechanisms if there's an interest.

-Mike