Hello!
This week in class we’ve been discussing testing using fakes, more specifically with Stubs. Our first assignment this week told us about the different kinds of fakes used in testing, which I found a little confusing at first, since I would have liked to have seen a more literal example of all the different variants. That is why, for the sake of improving my knowledge on the subject going forward, since this is something we’ll be talking about, I decided to do some reading on stubs and mocks, from a blog post written by Raphael F. on Medium.
The article spoke at length about the differences between mocks and stubs, and gave some meaningful examples of both. I appreciated the use of diagrams in the article, as it shows what each of them interacts with and how (i.e. A stub doesn’t interact with a database, and is instead a hard-coded value to be grabbed for testing). That wasn’t something that was immediately obvious to me in the assignments, and during our assignment on Stubs specifically it began to make more sense, but I appreciate the way the article laid out the concept in plain text, and made it easier to understand. I also liked that the blog post went over real world applications for each of the fake types, such a using stubs for read/write actions to keep the code and files separate, or using mocks for API testing. Admittedly I am still a little hazy on mocks, but I think by the time we go over it in class, it will all make sense.
In closing, I really do value stubs as valuable pieces of testing equipment, since they allow me to test code without having to have every intricate detail finished. It makes sense for confirming methods got used, and that a specific path through the program is being followed. Stubs can’t do everything, you can’t really test complex operations on a piece of code that doesn’t work, but for basic probing and testing, I could see myself using stubs a lot more often. It feels like one of those things that I could have used before without thinking about it, which makes sense, as I am the kind of programmer who likes taking things one step at a time, and making sure one piece works before moving on to the next. But now that I have a name connected to the action, I really appreciate it as a tool that will play a big role in my programming career going forward.
Link to the blog post in question: https://medium.com/@fideraphael/a-comprehensive-guide-to-stub-and-mock-testing-unveiling-the-essence-of-effective-software-testing-7f7817e3eab4
From the blog Camille's Cluttered Closet by Camille and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.