Alex Collins Software engineering

Given/When/Then JUnit

· testing junit

I was recently introduced to a way to take some of the benefits of using the given/when/then style of specification based testing, and use them directly with JUnit.

You can get some of the benefits of using BDD style testing, but without the dependency on a system such as Cucumber JVM.

The code is on Github.

Let consider the Gherkin from Wikipedia’s page on BDD.

Feature: Returns go to stock

	In order to keep track of stock
	As a store owner
	I want to add items back to stock when they're returned

Scenario: Refunded items should be returned to stock
	Given a customer previously bought a black sweater from me
	  And I currently have three black sweaters left in stock
	 When he returns the sweater for a refund
 	 Then I should have four black sweaters in stock

Scenario: Replaced items should be returned to stock
	Given that a customer buys a blue garment
	  And I have two blue garments in stock
  	  And three black garments in stock.
	 When he returns the garment for a replacement in black,
	 Then I should have three blue garments in stock
	  And two black garments in stock

We can code this into JUnit test (commit). The class represents the story, and each scenario is a method.

/**
 * In order to keep track of stock
 * As a store owner
 * I want to add items back to stock when they're returned
 */
public class ReturnsGoToStockStoryTest {

    @Test
    public void refundedItemsShouldBeReturnedToStock() {
        // Given a customer previously bought a black sweater from me
        // And I currently have three black sweaters left in stock
        // When he returns the sweater for a refund
        // Then I should have four black sweaters in stock
        fail();
    }

    @Test
    public void replacedItemsShouldBeReturnedToStock() {
        // Given that a customer buys a blue garment
        // And I have two blue garments in stock
        // And three black garments in stock.
        // When he returns the garment for a replacement in black,
        // Then I should have three blue garments in stock
        // And two black garments in stock
        fail();
    }
}

There’s a couple of things to note here:

Now we can implment the first test scenario (commit):

    @Test
    public void refundedItemsShouldBeReturnedToStock() {

        Inventory inventory = new Inventory();

        // Given a customer previously bought a black sweater from me
        BlackSweater blackSweater = new BlackSweater();
        inventory.sellItem(blackSweater, new Customer());
        
        // And I currently have three black sweaters left in stock
        inventory.addItem(new BlackSweater());
        inventory.addItem(new BlackSweater());
        inventory.addItem(new BlackSweater());

        // When he returns the sweater for a refund
        inventory.returnItem(blackSweater);

        // Then I should have four black sweaters in stock
        assertEquals(4, inventory.countStock(BlackSweater.class));
    }

Go ahead and implement the logic if you like. I’ve implement hard-coded returns in my code. Lets complete the second test (commit).

    @Test
    public void replacedItemsShouldBeReturnedToStock() {

        Inventory inventory = new Inventory();

        // Given that a customer buys a blue garment
        BlueGarment blueGarment = new BlueGarment();
        inventory.sellItem(blueGarment, new Customer());

        // And I have two blue garments in stock
        inventory.addItem(new BlueGarment());
        inventory.addItem(new BlueGarment());

        // And three black garments in stock.
        inventory.addItem(new BlackGarment());
        inventory.addItem(new BlackGarment());
        inventory.addItem(new BlackGarment());

        // When he returns the garment for a replacement in black,
        inventory.replaceItem(blueGarment, inventory.get(BlackGarment.class));

        // Then I should have three blue garments in stock
        assertEquals(3, inventory.countStock(BlueGarment.class));

        // And two black garments in stock
        assertEquals(2, inventory.countStock(BlueGarment.class));
    }

These test share both customer and inventory. We can refactor this out.

    private Inventory inventory;
    private Customer customer;

    @Before
    public void setUp() throws Exception {
        inventory = new Inventory();
        customer = new Customer();
    }

Finally, we can implement the main code (commit). See that I’ve still got TODOs in the code, as I can clearly see some other scenarios that we’ll want to test.

I hope this shows you one interesting way to write tests and bring some new ideas to your code without having to depend on another technology to do so.

Read more about unit testing.