Good Unit Test CheckList

Jean-baptiste Rieu

Aug. 20, 11 · Interview

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Here are a few items I try to respect every time I write unit tests.

My test class is testing one and only one class
My methods are testing one and only one method at a time
My variables and methods names are explicit
My test cases are easy to read by human
My tests are also testing expected exception with @Test(expected=MyException.class)
My tests don’t need access to database
My tests don’t need access to network resources
My tests respect the usual clean code standards (lenght of lines, cyclomatic complexity,…)
My tests control side effects, limit values (max, min) and null variables (even if it throws an exception)
My tests can be run any time on any place without needing configuration
My tests are concrete (ex. dates are hardwired, not computed every time, strings too…)
My tests use mock to simulate/stub complex class structure or methods

I’m pretty sure there are more. Any ideas?

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