Agree with Jeremy's comments. I don't think the unit tests should be
advertised or seen as a guide to using the API at a system or functional
level.
Their purpose is simply to test the methods under test, using the minimum
necessary preconfiguration to accurately test the methods' normal (and
abnormal)  behaviour.
+1 to your point about constructors. If the ctors are available internally
then they certainly should be available to the white-box tester.

Probably plenty of scope for discussion here, and reviews would be good for
that.

Kind Regards,

Graham.
_____________________________________________
Graham C Turrell CEng, MBCS
Chartered IT Practitioner

WebSphere ESB Foundation Technologies
DE3F16 / MP 211
IBM Labs
Hursley Park
Winchester, Hampshire
England.  SO21 2JN

Tel +44-(0)1962-815018
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

"No army can withstand the force of an idea whose time
has come.". -Victor Hugo

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote on 29/01/2007 09:38:07:

> On 29/01/07, John Kaputin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [...]
> > Many of the Woden unit tests do use impl classes directly, violating
the
> > Woden API. I've even written some of these myself!  This was done for
> > convenience originally - short cuts when creating tests, but as Woden
has
> > evolved it has become more important to use the API correctly.  These
unit
> > tests don't actually break, either because setters have been used to
> > correctly initialize them or because they don't exercise the code paths
> > that might cause problems when not correctly initialized.  However, as
> > users may end up looking at the test cases for coding examples I think
we
> > should review them and change them to use the API where it's easy to do
so.
>
> +1 to that.
>
> > And document the exceptions if there are any (e.g. it might just be
easier
> > in some cases to set up a complex test case programmatically by using
> > non-API techniques).
>
> wouldn't that mean users have an excuse to do the same. 'White box'
> unit tests should be allowed to use ctors - we could document these
> tests as such and discourage users to copy the code.
>
> Cheers,
> Jeremy
>
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