Test Driven Development with C#

The Test-Driven Development in C# course presents a number of modern practices for developing code based on an iterative and incremental development lifecycle. Agility and predictability are two qualities often missing from software development. A test-driven approach, in which design is grown and code delivered incrementally according to functionality or risk, forms the basis of the construction phase of an iterative and incremental development. The use of unit testing provides confidence in existing code and supports the ability to refactor code as development unfolds. The course can be delivered using NUnit, MSTest or XUnit as the testing frameworks of choice. Mocking is also explored using both Moq and NSubstitute.

Objectives

Appreciate the benefits of a continuous and iterative approach to design and delivery
Recognise the purpose and practice of refactoring in keeping a system supple and adaptable
Know how to build up a set of unit tests
Understand the consequences of dependency management on testing and code quality and working with mocks using RhinoMock

Prerequisites

Experience in C# programming

Agile Development Microprocess

Traditional versus agile development processes
Iterative and incremental development
Informal and continuous design
The role of refactoring
Refactoring versus other code changes
Extreme Programming
Test-Driven Development

Testing in Principle

Traditional view and reality of testing
Driving development through testing
Testing early, often and automatically
Testing versus debugging
White-box versus black-box testing
Functional versus operational testing

Basic Unit Testing in Practice

Test plans versus test code
Use of Debug.Assert
Testing at the interface
Testing the simplest things first
Testing incrementally
Testing correctness of failure

Overview of NUnit, MSTest and xUnit

NUnit and the xUnit family
MSTest and the .NET Framework
Test fixtures and test methods
The role of attributes in NUnit's design
Assertion methods
Testing correctness of exceptions
Defining common fixture code
Mocking with Moq and NSubstitute

Test-Writing Techniques

Red, green, refactor
None to one to many
Faking it
Telling the truth
Isolated and short tests
Refactor common fixture code
Declare, prepare, assert
Test by method, state or scenario
Custom assertions

Common Refactorings

Renaming variables, methods, classes and packages
Restructuring class hierarchies by extracting interfaces, superclasses and subclasses
Partitioning classes by extracting classes and methods
Changing private representation