ploeh blog

After three years on MSDN blogs, I'll be moving my blog to http://blog.ploeh.dk . Why? Read the answer here . This is most likely the last post on this blog, so if you'd like to stay tuned, please go and subscribe to the new blog .

When presented with a new technology, one of my primary evaluation criteria is its testability, so it should come as no surprise to the regular reader of this blog that this was also foremost in my mind when Windows Azure was presented at PDC. Much of...

In my previous post , I discussed how to implement a Fake ADO.NET Data Service for use with unit testing, showing how you can develop a one-off service that addresses specific needs, such as querying parents and children in the example. As I hinted...

Previously , I discussed unit testing ADO.NET Data Service clients using a Fake ADO.NET Data Service, and I promised to demonstrate how to create such a service. In this article I will continue the previous example and implement the Fake MyService class...

In my previous post , I discussed unit testing ADO.NET Data Services and how you can host and test the service itself. In this post, I'll take a look at the opposite scenario: You have a client of an ADO.NET Data Service, and you want to unit test the...

ADO.NET Data Services enables you to expose data (including, but not limited to, relational data) as REST services. Since it's built on top of WCF, it can be tested utilizing similar techniques , but allow me to elaborate a bit on the subject. As with...

Zero-Friction TDD post #10: In principle, defining properties (or fields, for that matter) while TDD'ing should be no different than defining methods . Again, the important part is to stay focused on the test at hand, and not become bogged down by...

Yet Another Zero-Friction TDD Article (YAZFTA): When writing unit tests in the TDD fashion, it's important to stay in the zone and not get side-tracked by irrelevant issues. You need to avoid what I call mental context switching. Focus on writing the...

...and now, in this week's episode of Zero-Friction TDD : Optional Assert messages that aren't optional anyway! Actually, this piece of advice comes almost directly from the xUnit Test Patterns book, so I was in doubt whether I should post it all,...

Yesterday, I posted my first post over on the Microsoft Dynamics Mobile Team blog . More are likely to follow. In case you are wondering what this means for this blog, the answer is: Nothing. I plan to continue blogging in more or less the same vein as...

This is a post in my Zero-Friction TDD series. One of my colleagues recently asked my why I prefer Assert.AreEqual<T> over one of the non-generic Assert.AreEqual overloads for primitive types. In most cases, I'm very happy with the C# compiler...

This is an installment in my Zero-Friction TDD series. When I was a kid, my parents taught me that many is any number above three two*; they used the simple counting sequence one, two, many . This little story may make me seem like I was an incredibly...

When working with the Windows Azure Storage service, you must create the tables before you can use them; in essence, defining the 'schema' of your Azure storage service. On his blog, Steve Marx writes : "Probably the best solution is to have...

This is an installment in my Zero-Friction TDD series. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may have noticed a certain pattern in my unit test examples (like this one ). This is because I always follow the Four-Phase Test pattern (which is...

This is an installment in my Zero-Friction TDD series. Sometimes, you don't care about the return value from a particular operation. The simplest example is if you want to check that creating a new instance of a specific type will throw an exception...

If you are wondering about what I'm doing these days, we (the Microsoft Dynamics Mobile Team ) just released a new version of Microsoft Dynamics Mobile ! And there was much rejoicing :)

This post is an installment in my series on Zero-Friction TDD . Often when writing a unit test, the SUT 's API will force you to create objects that you really don't care about. As an example, take a look at the signature of this constructor: public...

In my series of Zero-Friction TDD tips and tricks, it's time to look at naming Direct Output variables. [ TestMethod ] public void DoStuffWillReturnMessage() { // Fixture setup string expectedResult = "ploeh" ; MyClass sut = new MyClass (); // Exercise...

Writing good code is difficult. Unit tests are written as code, so a corollary to the first sentence is that writing good unit tests is also difficult. TDD (particularly if you interpret the last D as Design ) carries this challenge in abundance, since...

xUnit.net provides the Assert.Throws method for testing exceptions, instead of the ExpectedException attribute. In his original announcement , James Newkirk explains why this is a much better approach, and I can only agree. However, those of us that for...

I'm currently at PDC in Los Angeles, so if you are here as well, take a moment to say hello if you see me :)

Today, I just spent an entire afternoon troubleshooting a problem in one of my WCF services. When the solution finally dawned on me, it was so simple that I wanted to kick myself, so I thought that by sharing my experience, I might spare you the agony...

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may have noticed that for the last couple of months, every test I've posted has shared some similarities; one of which is that I always name my SUT test variable sut . Here's a simple example: [ TestMethod...

Lots of applications write to the Windows Event Log. When TDD'ing, event logging is part of an application's Indirect Output , so to verify that logging happens correctly, you need to verify the test against an Observation Point . As always, the correct...

When unit testing data access components, I prefer to test against run-time components that match the target environment as closely as possible. In other words, if the data access component targets SQL Server 2008, I prefer to test against a SQL Server...