Book Image

Test-Driven Java Development, Second Edition - Second Edition

By : Viktor Farcic, Alex Garcia
Book Image

Test-Driven Java Development, Second Edition - Second Edition

By: Viktor Farcic, Alex Garcia

Overview of this book

Test-driven development (TDD) is a development approach that relies on a test-first procedure that emphasizes writing a test before writing the necessary code, and then refactoring the code to optimize it.The value of performing TDD with Java, one of the longest established programming languages, is to improve the productivity of programmers and the maintainability and performance of code, and develop a deeper understanding of the language and how to employ it effectively. Starting with the basics of TDD and understanding why its adoption is beneficial, this book will take you from the first steps of TDD with Java until you are confident enough to embrace the practice in your day-to-day routine.You'll be guided through setting up tools, frameworks, and the environment you need, and we will dive right into hands-on exercises with the goal of mastering one practice, tool, or framework at a time. You'll learn about the Red-Green-Refactor procedure, how to write unit tests, and how to use them as executable documentation.With this book, you'll also discover how to design simple and easily maintainable code, work with mocks, utilize behavior-driven development, refactor old legacy code, and release a half-finished feature to production with feature toggles.You will finish this book with a deep understanding of the test-driven development methodology and the confidence to apply it to application programming with Java.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Title Page
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
9
Refactoring Legacy Code – Making It Young Again
Index

Feature Toggles


You might have also heard about this as Feature Flipping or Feature Flags. No matter which expression we use, they are all based on a mechanism that permits you to turn on and off the features of your application. This is very useful when all code is merged into one branch and you must deal with partially finished (or integrated) code. With this technique, unfinished features can be hidden so that users cannot access them.

Due to its nature, there are other possible uses for this functionality. As a circuit breaker when something is wrong with a particular feature, providing graceful degradation of the application, shutting down secondary features to preserve hardware resources for business core operations, and so on. Feature Toggles, in some cases, can go even further. We might use them to enable features only to certain users, based on, for example, geographic location or their role. Another use is that we can enable new features for our testers only. That way, end users...