Panasonic Youth

xUnit frameworks - they aren't just for unit testing

I’ve had a discussion at my current client a few times where someone looks at a Junit test and says “this isn’t a unit test, whats the deal”. The answer usually is “yea, its a functional/integration/etc test - Junit is not just for unit testing”. Completely isolated, theoretically pure unit tests are great and essential for TDD, but don’t overlook the value that comes with broader tests. The always pragmatic Jared has a related post that inspired this entry, and his book Ship It also has a great section on “mock client tests” as a higher level of testing then unit.