rmock-users

[Rmock-users] How to mock an object without a junit test

[Baumgartner M. <Mar...@sw...>]

Hi all,

I started an evaluation of mocking tools comparing rMock and jMock. What
I have seen - and understood - so far is very interesting, but still
little.

Now we are trying to mock an object without a junit suite, that is
without extending RMockTestCase

The motivation is this:=20

the program is calling a backend system through a Connection-object.
This 'border'-object we want to mock and then stuff it into objects
using Connection via dependency injection


MockConnection mockConnection implements IConnection

Actor  actor =3D new Actor(mockConnection);


I found a Proxy class in your library, but no hint how to use it. I saw
this was possible in jMock, so I guess this is possible with Rmock too.


The next question is based on this:=20

When the backend system is changing, in particular the form or order of
replies, we have to update the mock (otherwise we would mock 'the
past'). Because there is a huge number of request/reply pairs, we must
automate this. The idea is to have a switch like "record" that would
write out the requests and its replies, from where we could generate a
new Mock.=20

Did anybody try this and has a suggestion?


Thanks for help

Markus

P.S. I googled the Internet for hours to find more documentation or
examples, but didn't find anything. The documentation is addressing
people that know a lot how the program works, but for newbies it is not
suited (I learned how to mock with jMock documentation, which is not
good as well , but a bit better. That's a pity because it does not ease
the access to the tool. (I even started to write my own documentation
including a testsuite with examples showing the different use cases and
I guess such a suite with simple example might be handy for other users
too. At least here it was...)

Is there anybody out there, who has or found some more documentation?
=20
=20
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Re: [Rmock-users] How to mock an object without a junit test

[Joakim O. <joa...@ag...>]

Hi Markus,
Thanks for your questions I feel I don't answer much but rather ask
more questions. I try to communicate where I come from when reading
your questions. I want to help but I fear I don't have much experience
with what you want to do so I try to half tell you what I do and half
comment on what I think can be done with RMock to meet your needs
whether I believe it's a good idea or not. I hope this helps some and
feel free to ask more.

> I started an evaluation of mocking tools comparing rMock and jMock. What
> I have seen - and understood - so far is very interesting, but still
> little.

Interesting, we would really like to know how the tool is perceived by
others so if you want to share what you've found on the list or
offline we would be very happy to hear about it.

>
> Now we are trying to mock an object without a junit suite, that is
> without extending RMockTestCase
>
> The motivation is this:
>
> the program is calling a backend system through a Connection-object.
> This 'border'-object we want to mock and then stuff it into objects
> using Connection via dependency injection
>
>
> MockConnection mockConnection implements IConnection
>
> Actor  actor = new Actor(mockConnection);
>

>From that description and the code above I can not see why creating
the mocks from a TestCase would be a problem. I'm sure I've missed
something important such as what you are using to inject the
dependencies. Personally I use RMock a bit inside out compared to what
you want to do. I test interactions between objects "inside" the
system instead of putting the mocks at the border of the system. This
is what RMock was designed to do but that doesn't mean it cannot be
used for other things.

>
> I found a Proxy class in your library, but no hint how to use it. I saw
> this was possible in jMock, so I guess this is possible with Rmock too.
>

The proxy class is used behind the scenes in RMock, it's not intended
to be used directly.
Simply put, RMock does not support what you want to do in any simple
way. We toyed around a bit with the framework for JUnit 4 wich by
design sort of requires what you're requesting. We managed to do it
but it required a bit of voodoo and quite frankly was a bit fragile
(due to RMocks internal design centered around a hub)

>
> The next question is based on this:
>
> When the backend system is changing, in particular the form or order of
> replies, we have to update the mock (otherwise we would mock 'the
> past'). Because there is a huge number of request/reply pairs, we must
> automate this. The idea is to have a switch like "record" that would
> write out the requests and its replies, from where we could generate a
> new Mock.
>

The order of calls should be unimportant unless you specify to use an
ordered section.
By using some obscure features in RMock
(forEach(expression).in(all.methodsOf(class))...
and a custom action that would print out the calls you could accomplish this.
However, I think that rMock is the most useful when driving the design
of units with TDD. I found that retrofitting RMock to test an already
built system or testing something that is bigger than one or a few
classes at a time tends to create more hedaches than be of help.

We use as a rule of thumb that if you need more than 10 expectations
to test something with rMock you're testing too much at the time.
Sometimes that means breaking stuff up with the single responsibility
principle as a guideline. Of course feel free to ignore this rule, the
important thing is that your test communicates your intentions clearly
and that you feel that RMock is a better choice than some other tool
you can think of for the job.


> Did anybody try this and has a suggestion?
>
>
> Thanks for help
>
> Markus
>
> P.S. I googled the Internet for hours to find more documentation or
> examples, but didn't find anything. The documentation is addressing
> people that know a lot how the program works, but for newbies it is not
> suited (I learned how to mock with jMock documentation, which is not
> good as well , but a bit better. That's a pity because it does not ease
> the access to the tool. (I even started to write my own documentation
> including a testsuite with examples showing the different use cases and
> I guess such a suite with simple example might be handy for other users
> too. At least here it was...)
>
> Is there anybody out there, who has or found some more documentation?
>
Did you check out the users guide?
http://rmock.sourceforge.net/documentation/docbook/pdf/rmock.pdf

It is very reference oriented. Please share what type of documentation
would help you get started and we will see what we can do (although we
have had less time than we would have liked for RMock lately for
private reasons mostly)



>
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