Unit Test Frameworks

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing...
Review: Although this book covers the use of unit tests in general and the xUnit frameworks in particular, Pete Hamill frequently doesn't go beyond basics available on the internet. He covers a number of languages (which may or may not be useful) and includes the class reference for JUnit and CppUnit. JUnit may be the de facto standard in Java, but there are a number of frameworks available for C++ with greater or lesser degrees of usefulness -- which might have provoked an interesting commentary comparing some of them. Not counting the sizeable class references, the text runs to a little over a hundred pages. The CD included contains about 30MB of data.

Rating:
Summary: Solid book with a predominant Java slant...
Review: An important part of programming that's become popular in recent years is the move towards test-driven programming. The O'Reilly book Unit Test Frameworks from Paul Hamill can help you understand how it works and why it's important.

Chapter List: Unit Test Frameworks: An Overview; Getting Started: Tutorial; The xUnit Family of Unit Test Frameworks; Writing Unit Tests; Unit Testing GUI Applications; JUnit; CppUnit; NUnit; PyUnit; XMLUnit; Resources; Simple C++ Unit Test Framework; JUnit Class Reference; CppUnit Class Reference; Glossary; Index

I've done a little work with JUnit in a prior project, and I must say the concept of test-driven programming was extremely powerful. By building up a collection of unit tests, you can make changes to a program with complete confidence that your modifications did not break existing functionality. This particular book can help you take the necessary steps towards understanding how to write the unit tests, and how to use the xUnit types of frameworks to assist your development regardless of language. I'll find it useful as I start to get back into more complex Java development, plus I want to explore the use of the xUnit packages that test web applications from a user interface perspective.

The book is supposed to be a language-independent overview of xUnit, and it basically is. Still, a majority of the book deals with how xUnit works in Java, so that's most likely where you'll see the most value. The other variants like NUnit and PyUnit get only a few pages, and it's a pretty high-level overview. The book probably could have been larger (it's only 198 pages) in order to cover the other xUnit packages in more detail.

Still, it's a very useful book, and one that you'll derive value from as you implement test-driven programming into your development plans.

Rating:
Summary: expounds well in several languages
Review: Hamill directs this book towards programmers of any level of experience. He points out that in all likelihood, you have hand crafted simple unit tests to validate your code. Even if you did not call them unit tests, you had the basic concept down. He takes this as a mutual starting point, to ease you into a more formal testing approach. Why you should do it and how. For the how, he instantiates with the popular open source JUnit. So at the very least, the book is a full-fledged user's manual for JUnit

But he also covers other test frameworks, like CppUnit, XMLUnit, PyUnit and NUnit. For example, NUnit is used in the .NET environment, to test C# code. He gives several C# examples and how to combine these with NUnit. Likewise, PyUnit tests Python code and we see how from some examples. The book certainly lives up to its promise of being a language independent coverage of the concept of unit testing.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but needs to cover more implementations...
Review: JUnit caused a major shift in the way people thougth about development. While the basic framwork was originally developed with Smalltalk, JUnit is what started the Unit Test Framework "revolution". This book explores the various xUnit options available for other languages.

Up to this point, I have only used the xUnit Test Framework with JUnit and Java. The book does a nice job explaining how to apply the Unit Test Framework to any development project. It goes into more depth on JUnit, CppUnit, NUnit (.NET), PyUnit (Python), and XMLUnit. I like the fact I now have a single book to get me started Unit Testing in pretty much any other language.

In my opinion, the book should have included more depth on the various other xUnit implementations. It also comes with a CD which contains and entire 14Mb of code and examples, which seemed a little silly. The examples could have easily been downloaded from somewhere and saved some money on the price of the book.

A nice start and does a good job covering a few of the xUnit Frameworks, but I wish it had taken the extra time to cover more implementations.