Unit Testing Private Methods

I’ve been reading a lot recently about people’s opinions regarding the correctness of unit testing private methods. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with testing them – after all, private or not, I want to know if the code is going to work!!!

Who cares if it’s private?

Granted, performing the tests on a private method can prove tricky. I use VSTS for my coding, thus I take advantage of the private accessor code that is generated for me when I create a test on a private method. I find it quite bizarre that someone would suggest not testing private code, rather you should unit test any public methods that make use of that private code. Tsk, rubbish. If I had a coder on my team with that attitude, I’d seriously question his sanity.

Passed Exam 70-630 TS: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Configuring

Well I'm really chuffed that I passed this exam last Monday, with a score of 805. Admittedly I wasn't 100% confident that I had prepared enough, but with the help of Measure Up I was able to fill in any blanks that I had in my preparation.

In response to this success, I'm looking to taking exam 70-542 TS: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 – Application Development. I have no timeframe yet though I'm looking to get that one out of the way in the next couple of months. In the meantime I might have a go at exam TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0—Application Development Foundation. Passing this will open the way for me to complete an MCPD certification, most likely in the web development area.

I'll keep you posted on any progress.....

TypeMock - It's well ace.

Recently I purchased a fantastic mock framework called TypeMock and I will recommend any developer who wishes to improve their testing procedures to consider it. There are a number of bloggers out there with plenty of code examples, but here is my contribution. Today I needed to figure out a way that I can mock a SharePoint SPSite obejct, specifically a site object returned via SPContext.Current.Site. I wanted to do this in order for me to be able to run unit tests against my web parts. Before using TypeMock, the only way I could know what my code was up to was by using trace files. Now, I'm able to physically run the web part's code in real time and see whats going on! :) Ok, so here's the test:

    Public Sub SPContext_MockInstance_Test()
        Dim mockSPSite As Mock = MockManager.MockObject(Of SPSite)(New String() {"http://mycomputer:24000"})
        Using recorder As New RecordExpectations
            Dim dumm As SPSite = SPContext.Current.Site
            recorder.Return(mockSPSite.MockedInstance)
        End Using
        Dim target As BitsAndBobs = New BitsAndBobs
        target.Testy()
        If mockSPSite.MockedInstance IsNot Nothing Then
            DirectCast(mockSPSite.MockedInstance, SPSite).Dispose()
        End If
    End Sub

OK, so the test code works by mocking the call to SPContext.Current.Site, and when that happens, rather then returning that site object (which never exists anyway) the TypeMock framework returns my testing instance of an SPSite object. This is a very cool feature for me, since I've found testing web parts to be a bit of pain. Looking up articles that show you how to attach the debugger to the w3wp.exe process is handy, but it's so fiddly and often doesn't work (well, for me anyway!), so this is a big improvement on that, and hopefully will speed up my testing and allow me to use various scenarios to test the code.

Why Not VB.NET Books?

What’s with this trend of book publishers bringing out new books on topics (such as ASP.NET, LINQ, etc) that are C# focused, and only after about 2–3 months later does the VB.NET version of the same book make an appearance?

This sucks and is totally unfair.

Recently I looking forward to some LINQ related books from APress, only to find out that they’re for C# devs. Normally this isn’t a problem, as it’s quite easy to transfer the C# code to VB.NET. But I was thinking, why the hell should I be doing this anyway? Both the C# and VB.NET books should be made available at the same time.

It's Been A While

Having not touched this blog for around 3.5 years, I thought it might be time a made another appearance!

So, with my first blog entry in a while, I thought I'd start off with a mention of a really useful utility that I came across last week called LINQPad.

If you're into writing LINQ queries then this tool will really help your LINQ skills. LINQPad isn't simply a Notepad for LINQ though, it has some really cool features.

No Need To Install

Once you download LINQPad there's no installer to run, just run the EXE itself and off you go.

Database Connectivity and LINQ To SQL Features

In this screenshot I've configured LINQPad to connect to the AdventureWorks database on my SQL Server instance:

From here I can drag tables into the query editor and use those in my queries. LINQPad automatically takes care of the underlying database connecting for you. Check out this example which returns the Title column value for all records in the Employees table:

Note the use of the Dump() method call, this displays the content of j into the LINQPad console window. This query results in the following output:

A cool feature is the SQL button found here:

Pressing this button will give you the SQL syntax for the LINQ to SQL query in the editor:

This is just a taster of how handy this utility could be for you. Check it out.