Book Image

Practical Test-Driven Development using C# 7

By : John Callaway, Clayton Hunt
Book Image

Practical Test-Driven Development using C# 7

By: John Callaway, Clayton Hunt

Overview of this book

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is a methodology that helps you to write as little as code as possible to satisfy software requirements, and ensures that what you've written does what it's supposed to do. If you're looking for a practical resource on Test-Driven Development this is the book for you. You've found a practical end-to-end guide that will help you implement Test-Driven Techniques for your software development projects. You will learn from industry standard patterns and practices, and shift from a conventional approach to a modern and efficient software testing approach in C# and JavaScript. This book starts with the basics of TDD and the components of a simple unit test. Then we look at setting up the testing framework so that you can easily run your tests in your development environment. You will then see the importance of defining and testing boundaries, abstracting away third-party code (including the .NET Framework), and working with different types of test double such as spies, mocks, and fakes. Moving on, you will learn how to think like a TDD developer when it comes to application development. Next, you'll focus on writing tests for new/changing requirements and covering newly discovered bugs, along with how to test JavaScript applications and perform integration testing. You’ll also learn how to identify code that is inherently un-testable, and identify some of the major problems with legacy applications that weren’t written with testability in mind. By the end of the book, you’ll have all the TDD skills you'll need and you’ll be able to re-enter the world as a TDD expert!
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Title Page
Packt Upsell
Foreword
Contributors
Preface
4
What to Know Before Getting Started
Index

Chapter 1. Why TDD is Important

You've picked up this book because you want to learn more about Test-Driven Development (TDD). Maybe you've heard the term before. Perhaps you've known software developers who write unit tests and want to learn more. We'll introduce you to the terms, the structure, and the ideology around TDD. By the end of this book, you'll have sufficient knowledge to re-enter the world as a Test-Driven Developer and feel confident about using your skills throughout your long and prosperous career.

Why this book? Certainly, there are many other books on the topic of TDD. We have written this book with the hope that it provides you, the reader, with low-level insight into the mindset we use when doing TDD. We also hope that this book provides an updated view of some of the concepts and lessons we have learned while doing TDD over the last 10 years. 

So, why is TDD so important? As more businesses and industries rely on software solutions, it's increasingly important that those solutions be robust and error-free. The cheaper and more consistent, they are the better. Applications developed with TDD in mind are inherently more testable, easier to maintain, and demonstrate a certain level of correctness not easily achieved otherwise.

In this chapter, we will gain an understanding of:

  • Defining TDD and exploring the basics
  • Creating our first tests in C# and JavaScript
  • Exploring the basic steps of Red, Green, Refactor
  • Growing complexity through tests