JUnit in Action

Author: Vincent Massol, Ted Husted List Price: $39.95 Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price ISBN: 1930110995 Publisher: Manning Publications Company (October, 2003) Edition: Paperback Sales Rank: 4,452 Average Customer Rating: 5 out of 5

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Customer Reviews

On the down side there could have been more context about JUnit and it's alternatives. The first chapter covers this somewhat but after that it is JUnit all the way.

On the upside, the book is well written and edited. It is concise and sometimes witty but not to the level of going off track.

The interesting chapters:

Chapter one introduces JUnit and shows some alternatives, mainly doing tests by hand.

Chapter two covers JUnit completely in detail. Which is almost a bit too much too fast and I found myself a little lost in the detail. It could stand to be broken up a little.

Chapter four is an excellent introduction to test driven development. This section alone is almost worth the price of the book.

Chapter five covers integrating JUnit into existing tools like Ant and Eclipse.

The second part then applies JUnit to each of a number of different types of code, including web pages, tag libraries, data access, etc. This is the heart of the matter and it's done very well. This connects the code you have to the JUnit test framework step by step. It's very well done.

If you are using JUnit or are interested in test driven development in Java this is a fantastic book and is well worth the money.

(Full disclosure: I am a Manning author but I in no way allow that to effect my reviews.)

This book is much more than the "hot to use the tool" approach of many current books as it deals very thoughtfully with test design and architetcure issues.

Vincent Massol takes the reader on a journey though the JUnit framework, the Cactus extension, Ant, and Mock Objects. He explains each topic in detail and leaves me with a good understanding of the topics. The book is liberally sprinkled with JUnit best practices that every reader should take to heart. The examples are clear and real world. The author addresses the complex issues of unit testing EJBs, and web apps head on. He does not shy away from the real issues that come with testing these kinds of applications.

The author also writes about how to integrate your unit testing into you build and configuration management systems. Personally, this is an area that most projects I have worked on needed the most help. It is all fine to have unit tests, but if they are not automated and part of your build process, there value is significantly decreased. Vincent deals with the complex problems of automating deployment of web apps and EJB components and testing them with your build system.

Another area that gets much needed attention is test database applications. The author presents a great chapter and example of using DBUnit and how to address the typical problems associated with database testing.

One flaw in the book has to be the snapshots of the JUnit GUI results screen. The author tells me the bar is green, but as hard as I squint it still looks dark grey.

To sum up, I think every Java software developer needs this book on their shelf. I am currently doing C# and I am happy that I have this book on my shelf as many of the ideas and best practices translate directly into NUnit testing.

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