ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

Test::Tutorial

Test::Tutorial(3)     User Contributed Perl Documentation    Test::Tutorial(3)



NAME
       Test::Tutorial - A tutorial about writing really basic tests

DESCRIPTION
       AHHHHHHH!!!!  NOT TESTING!  Anything but testing!  Beat me, whip me,
       send me to Detroit, but don't make me write tests!

       *sob*

       Besides, I don't know how to write the damned things.

       Is this you?  Is writing tests right up there with writing documenta-
       tion and having your fingernails pulled out?  Did you open up a test
       and read

           ######## We start with some black magic

       and decide that's quite enough for you?

       It's ok.  That's all gone now.  We've done all the black magic for you.
       And here are the tricks...

       Nuts and bolts of testing.

       Here's the most basic test program.

           #!/usr/bin/perl -w

           print "1..1\n";

           print 1 + 1 == 2 ? "ok 1\n" : "not ok 1\n";

       since 1 + 1 is 2, it prints:

           1..1
           ok 1

       What this says is: 1..1 "I'm going to run one test." [1] "ok 1" "The
       first test passed".  And that's about all magic there is to testing.
       Your basic unit of testing is the ok.  For each thing you test, an "ok"
       is printed.  Simple.  Test::Harness interprets your test results to
       determine if you succeeded or failed (more on that later).

       Writing all these print statements rapidly gets tedious.  Fortunately,
       there's Test::Simple.  It has one function, "ok()".

           #!/usr/bin/perl -w

           use Test::Simple tests => 1;

           ok( 1 + 1 == 2 );

       and that does the same thing as the code above.  "ok()" is the backbone
       of Perl testing, and we'll be using it instead of roll-your-own from
       here on.  If "ok()" gets a true value, the test passes.  False, it
       fails.

           #!/usr/bin/perl -w

           use Test::Simple tests => 2;
           ok( 1 + 1 == 2 );
           ok( 2 + 2 == 5 );

       from that comes

           1..2
           ok 1
           not ok 2
           #     Failed test (test.pl at line 5)
           # Looks like you failed 1 tests of 2.

       1..2 "I'm going to run two tests."  This number is used to ensure your
       test program ran all the way through and didn't die or skip some tests.
       "ok 1" "The first test passed."  "not ok 2" "The second test failed".
       Test::Simple helpfully prints out some extra commentary about your
       tests.

       It's not scary.  Come, hold my hand.  We're going to give an example of
       testing a module.  For our example, we'll be testing a date library,
       Date::ICal.  It's on CPAN, so download a copy and follow along. [2]

       Where to start?

       This is the hardest part of testing, where do you start?  People often
       get overwhelmed at the apparent enormity of the task of testing a whole
       module.  Best place to start is at the beginning.  Date::ICal is an
       object-oriented module, and that means you start by making an object.
       So we test "new()".

           #!/usr/bin/perl -w

           use Test::Simple tests => 2;

           use Date::ICal;

           my $ical = Date::ICal->new;         # create an object
           ok( defined $ical );                # check that we got something
           ok( $ical->isa('Date::ICal') );     # and it's the right class

       run that and you should get:

           1..2
           ok 1
           ok 2

       congratulations, you've written your first useful test.

       Names

       That output isn't terribly descriptive, is it?  When you have two tests
       you can figure out which one is #2, but what if you have 102?

       Each test can be given a little descriptive name as the second argument
       to "ok()".

           use Test::Simple tests => 2;

           ok( defined $ical,              'new() returned something' );
           ok( $ical->isa('Date::ICal'),   "  and it's the right class" );

       So now you'd see...

           1..2
           ok 1 - new() returned something
           ok 2 -   and it's the right class

       Test the manual

       Simplest way to build up a decent testing suite is to just test what
       the manual says it does. [3] Let's pull something out of the "SYNOPSIS"
       in Date::ICal and test that all its bits work.

           #!/usr/bin/perl -w

           use Test::Simple tests => 8;

           use Date::ICal;

           $ical = Date::ICal->new( year => 1964, month => 10, day => 16,
                                    hour => 16, min => 12, sec => 47,
                                    tz => '0530' );

           ok( defined $ical,            'new() returned something' );
           ok( $ical->isa('Date::ICal'), "  and it's the right class" );
           ok( $ical->sec   == 47,       '  sec()'   );
           ok( $ical->min   == 12,       '  min()'   );
           ok( $ical->hour  == 16,       '  hour()'  );
           ok( $ical->day   == 17,       '  day()'   );
           ok( $ical->month == 10,       '  month()' );
           ok( $ical->year  == 1964,     '  year()'  );

       run that and you get:

           1..8
           ok 1 - new() returned something
           ok 2 -   and it's the right class
           ok 3 -   sec()
           ok 4 -   min()
           ok 5 -   hour()
           not ok 6 -   day()
           #     Failed test (- at line 16)
           ok 7 -   month()
           ok 8 -   year()
           # Looks like you failed 1 tests of 8.

       Whoops, a failure! [4] Test::Simple helpfully lets us know on what line
       the failure occurred, but not much else.  We were supposed to get 17,
       but we didn't.  What did we get??  Dunno.  We'll have to re-run the
       test in the debugger or throw in some print statements to find out.

       Instead, we'll switch from Test::Simple to Test::More.  Test::More does
       everything Test::Simple does, and more!  In fact, Test::More does
       things exactly the way Test::Simple does.  You can literally swap
       Test::Simple out and put Test::More in its place.  That's just what
       we're going to do.

       Test::More does more than Test::Simple.  The most important difference
       at this point is it provides more informative ways to say "ok".
       Although you can write almost any test with a generic "ok()", it can't
       tell you what went wrong.  Instead, we'll use the "is()" function,
       which lets us declare that something is supposed to be the same as
       something else:

           #!/usr/bin/perl -w

           use Test::More tests => 8;

           use Date::ICal;

           $ical = Date::ICal->new( year => 1964, month => 10, day => 16,
                                    hour => 16, min => 12, sec => 47,
                                    tz => '0530' );

           ok( defined $ical,            'new() returned something' );
           ok( $ical->isa('Date::ICal'), "  and it's the right class" );
           is( $ical->sec,     47,       '  sec()'   );
           is( $ical->min,     12,       '  min()'   );
           is( $ical->hour,    16,       '  hour()'  );
           is( $ical->day,     17,       '  day()'   );
           is( $ical->month,   10,       '  month()' );
           is( $ical->year,    1964,     '  year()'  );

       "Is "$ical->sec" 47?"  "Is "$ical->min" 12?"  With "is()" in place, you
       get some more information

           1..8
           ok 1 - new() returned something
           ok 2 -   and it's the right class
           ok 3 -   sec()
           ok 4 -   min()
           ok 5 -   hour()
           not ok 6 -   day()
           #     Failed test (- at line 16)
           #          got: '16'
           #     expected: '17'
           ok 7 -   month()
           ok 8 -   year()
           # Looks like you failed 1 tests of 8.

       letting us know that "$ical->day" returned 16, but we expected 17.  A
       quick check shows that the code is working fine, we made a mistake when
       writing up the tests.  Just change it to:

           is( $ical->day,     16,       '  day()'   );

       and everything works.

       So any time you're doing a "this equals that" sort of test, use "is()".
       It even works on arrays.  The test is always in scalar context, so you
       can test how many elements are in a list this way. [5]

           is( @foo, 5, 'foo has 5 elements' );

       Sometimes the tests are wrong

       Which brings us to a very important lesson.  Code has bugs.  Tests are
       code.  Ergo, tests have bugs.  A failing test could mean a bug in the
       code, but don't discount the possibility that the test is wrong.

       On the flip side, don't be tempted to prematurely declare a test incor-
       rect just because you're having trouble finding the bug.  Invalidating
       a test isn't something to be taken lightly, and don't use it as a cop
       out to avoid work.

       Testing lots of values

       We're going to be wanting to test a lot of dates here, trying to trick
       the code with lots of different edge cases.  Does it work before 1970?
       After 2038?  Before 1904?  Do years after 10,000 give it trouble?  Does
       it get leap years right?  We could keep repeating the code above, or we
       could set up a little try/expect loop.

           use Test::More tests => 32;
           use Date::ICal;

           my %ICal_Dates = (
                   # An ICal string     And the year, month, date
                   #                    hour, minute and second we expect.
                   '19971024T120000' =>    # from the docs.
                                       [ 1997, 10, 24, 12,  0,  0 ],
                   '20390123T232832' =>    # after the Unix epoch
                                       [ 2039,  1, 23, 23, 28, 32 ],
                   '19671225T000000' =>    # before the Unix epoch
                                       [ 1967, 12, 25,  0,  0,  0 ],
                   '18990505T232323' =>    # before the MacOS epoch
                                       [ 1899,  5,  5, 23, 23, 23 ],
           );

           while( my($ical_str, $expect) = each %ICal_Dates ) {
               my $ical = Date::ICal->new( ical => $ical_str );

               ok( defined $ical,            "new(ical => '$ical_str')" );
               ok( $ical->isa('Date::ICal'), "  and it's the right class" );

               is( $ical->year,    $expect->[0],     '  year()'  );
               is( $ical->month,   $expect->[1],     '  month()' );
               is( $ical->day,     $expect->[2],     '  day()'   );
               is( $ical->hour,    $expect->[3],     '  hour()'  );
               is( $ical->min,     $expect->[4],     '  min()'   );
               is( $ical->sec,     $expect->[5],     '  sec()'   );
           }

       So now we can test bunches of dates by just adding them to %ICal_Dates.
       Now that it's less work to test with more dates, you'll be inclined to
       just throw more in as you think of them.  Only problem is, every time
       we add to that we have to keep adjusting the "use Test::More tests =>
       ##" line.  That can rapidly get annoying.  There's two ways to make
       this work better.

       First, we can calculate the plan dynamically using the "plan()" func-
       tion.

           use Test::More;
           use Date::ICal;

           my %ICal_Dates = (
               ...same as before...
           );

           # For each key in the hash we're running 8 tests.
           plan tests => keys %ICal_Dates * 8;

       Or to be even more flexible, we use "no_plan".  This means we're just
       running some tests, don't know how many. [6]

           use Test::More 'no_plan';   # instead of tests => 32

       now we can just add tests and not have to do all sorts of math to fig-
       ure out how many we're running.

       Informative names

       Take a look at this line here

           ok( defined $ical,            "new(ical => '$ical_str')" );

       we've added more detail about what we're testing and the ICal string
       itself we're trying out to the name.  So you get results like:

           ok 25 - new(ical => '19971024T120000')
           ok 26 -   and it's the right class
           ok 27 -   year()
           ok 28 -   month()
           ok 29 -   day()
           ok 30 -   hour()
           ok 31 -   min()
           ok 32 -   sec()

       if something in there fails, you'll know which one it was and that will
       make tracking down the problem easier.  So try to put a bit of debug-
       ging information into the test names.

       Describe what the tests test, to make debugging a failed test easier
       for you or for the next person who runs your test.

       Skipping tests

       Poking around in the existing Date::ICal tests, I found this in
       t/01sanity.t [7]

           #!/usr/bin/perl -w

           use Test::More tests => 7;
           use Date::ICal;

           # Make sure epoch time is being handled sanely.
           my $t1 = Date::ICal->new( epoch => 0 );
           is( $t1->epoch, 0,          "Epoch time of 0" );

           # XXX This will only work on unix systems.
           is( $t1->ical, '19700101Z', "  epoch to ical" );

           is( $t1->year,  1970,       "  year()"  );
           is( $t1->month, 1,          "  month()" );
           is( $t1->day,   1,          "  day()"   );

           # like the tests above, but starting with ical instead of epoch
           my $t2 = Date::ICal->new( ical => '19700101Z' );
           is( $t2->ical, '19700101Z', "Start of epoch in ICal notation" );

           is( $t2->epoch, 0,          "  and back to ICal" );

       The beginning of the epoch is different on most non-Unix operating sys-
       tems [8].  Even though Perl smooths out the differences for the most
       part, certain ports do it differently.  MacPerl is one off the top of
       my head. [9] We know this will never work on MacOS.  So rather than
       just putting a comment in the test, we can explicitly say it's never
       going to work and skip the test.

           use Test::More tests => 7;
           use Date::ICal;

           # Make sure epoch time is being handled sanely.
           my $t1 = Date::ICal->new( epoch => 0 );
           is( $t1->epoch, 0,          "Epoch time of 0" );

           SKIP: {
               skip('epoch to ICal not working on MacOS', 6)
                   if $^O eq 'MacOS';

               is( $t1->ical, '19700101Z', "  epoch to ical" );

               is( $t1->year,  1970,       "  year()"  );
               is( $t1->month, 1,          "  month()" );
               is( $t1->day,   1,          "  day()"   );

               # like the tests above, but starting with ical instead of epoch
               my $t2 = Date::ICal->new( ical => '19700101Z' );
               is( $t2->ical, '19700101Z', "Start of epoch in ICal notation" );

               is( $t2->epoch, 0,          "  and back to ICal" );
           }

       A little bit of magic happens here.  When running on anything but
       MacOS, all the tests run normally.  But when on MacOS, "skip()" causes
       the entire contents of the SKIP block to be jumped over.  It's never
       run.  Instead, it prints special output that tells Test::Harness that
       the tests have been skipped.

           1..7
           ok 1 - Epoch time of 0
           ok 2 # skip epoch to ICal not working on MacOS
           ok 3 # skip epoch to ICal not working on MacOS
           ok 4 # skip epoch to ICal not working on MacOS
           ok 5 # skip epoch to ICal not working on MacOS
           ok 6 # skip epoch to ICal not working on MacOS
           ok 7 # skip epoch to ICal not working on MacOS

       This means your tests won't fail on MacOS.  This means less emails from
       MacPerl users telling you about failing tests that you know will never
       work.  You've got to be careful with skip tests.  These are for tests
       which don't work and never will.  It is not for skipping genuine bugs
       (we'll get to that in a moment).

       The tests are wholly and completely skipped. [10]  This will work.

           SKIP: {
               skip("I don't wanna die!");

               die, die, die, die, die;
           }

       Todo tests

       Thumbing through the Date::ICal man page, I came across this:

          ical

              $ical_string = $ical->ical;

          Retrieves, or sets, the date on the object, using any
          valid ICal date/time string.

       "Retrieves or sets".  Hmmm, didn't see a test for using "ical()" to set
       the date in the Date::ICal test suite.  So I'll write one.

           use Test::More tests => 1;
           use Date::ICal;

           my $ical = Date::ICal->new;
           $ical->ical('20201231Z');
           is( $ical->ical, '20201231Z',   'Setting via ical()' );

       run that and I get

           1..1
           not ok 1 - Setting via ical()
           #     Failed test (- at line 6)
           #          got: '20010814T233649Z'
           #     expected: '20201231Z'
           # Looks like you failed 1 tests of 1.

       Whoops!  Looks like it's unimplemented.  Let's assume we don't have the
       time to fix this. [11] Normally, you'd just comment out the test and
       put a note in a todo list somewhere.  Instead, we're going to explic-
       itly state "this test will fail" by wrapping it in a "TODO" block.

           use Test::More tests => 1;

           TODO: {
               local $TODO = 'ical($ical) not yet implemented';

               my $ical = Date::ICal->new;
               $ical->ical('20201231Z');

               is( $ical->ical, '20201231Z',   'Setting via ical()' );
           }

       Now when you run, it's a little different:

           1..1
           not ok 1 - Setting via ical() # TODO ical($ical) not yet implemented
           #          got: '20010822T201551Z'
           #     expected: '20201231Z'

       Test::More doesn't say "Looks like you failed 1 tests of 1".  That '#
       TODO' tells Test::Harness "this is supposed to fail" and it treats a
       failure as a successful test.  So you can write tests even before
       you've fixed the underlying code.

       If a TODO test passes, Test::Harness will report it "UNEXPECTEDLY SUC-
       CEEDED".  When that happens, you simply remove the TODO block with
       "local $TODO" and turn it into a real test.

       Testing with taint mode.

       Taint mode is a funny thing.  It's the globalest of all global fea-
       tures.  Once you turn it on, it affects all code in your program and
       all modules used (and all the modules they use).  If a single piece of
       code isn't taint clean, the whole thing explodes.  With that in mind,
       it's very important to ensure your module works under taint mode.

       It's very simple to have your tests run under taint mode.  Just throw a
       "-T" into the "#!" line.  Test::Harness will read the switches in "#!"
       and use them to run your tests.

           #!/usr/bin/perl -Tw

           ...test normally here...

       So when you say "make test" it will be run with taint mode and warnings
       on.

FOOTNOTES
       1   The first number doesn't really mean anything, but it has to be 1.
           It's the second number that's important.

       2   For those following along at home, I'm using version 1.31.  It has
           some bugs, which is good -- we'll uncover them with our tests.

       3   You can actually take this one step further and test the manual
           itself.  Have a look at Test::Inline (formerly Pod::Tests).

       4   Yes, there's a mistake in the test suite.  What!  Me, contrived?

       5   We'll get to testing the contents of lists later.

       6   But what happens if your test program dies halfway through?!  Since
           we didn't say how many tests we're going to run, how can we know it
           failed?  No problem, Test::More employs some magic to catch that
           death and turn the test into a failure, even if every test passed
           up to that point.

       7   I cleaned it up a little.

       8   Most Operating Systems record time as the number of seconds since a
           certain date.  This date is the beginning of the epoch.  Unix's
           starts at midnight January 1st, 1970 GMT.

       9   MacOS's epoch is midnight January 1st, 1904.  VMS's is midnight,
           November 17th, 1858, but vmsperl emulates the Unix epoch so it's
           not a problem.

       10  As long as the code inside the SKIP block at least compiles.
           Please don't ask how.  No, it's not a filter.

       11  Do NOT be tempted to use TODO tests as a way to avoid fixing simple
           bugs!

AUTHORS
       Michael G Schwern <schwern@pobox.com> and the perl-qa dancers!

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright 2001 by Michael G Schwern <schwern@pobox.com>.

       This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
       under the same terms as Perl itself.

       Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples in these files are
       hereby placed into the public domain.  You are permitted and encouraged
       to use this code in your own programs for fun or for profit as you see
       fit.  A simple comment in the code giving credit would be courteous but
       is not required.



perl v5.8.6                       2006-11-05                 Test::Tutorial(3)