Question

I’m familiar with the basic principles of TDD, being :

1. Write tests, these will fail because of no implementation
2. Write basic implementation to make tests pass
3. Refactor code

However, I’m a little confused as to where interfaces and implementation fit. I’m creating a Spring web application in my spare time, and rather than going in guns blazing, I’d like to understand how I can test interfaces/implementations a little better, take this simple example code I’ve created here :

public class RunMe
{

    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        // Using a dummy service now, but would have a real implementation later (fetch from DB etc.)
        UserService userService = new DummyUserService();
        System.out.println(userService.getUserById(1));
    }
}

interface UserService
{
    public String getUserById(Integer id);
}

class DummyUserService implements UserService
{
    @Override
    public String getUserById(Integer id)
    {
        return "James";
    }
}

I’ve created the UserService interface, ultimately there will be a real implementation of this that will query a database, however in order to get the application off the ground I’ve substituted a DummyUserService implementation that will just return some static data for now.

Question : How can I implement a testing strategy for the above?

I could create a test class called DummyUserServiceTest and test that when I call getUserById() it’ll return James, seems pretty simple if not a waste of time(?).

Subsequently, I could also create a test class RealUserService that would test that getUserById() returns a users name from the database. This is the part that confuses me slightly, in doing so, does this not essentially overstep the boundary of a unit test and become more of an intergration test (with the hit on the DB)?

Question (improved, a little): When using interfaces with dummy/stubbed, and real implementations, which parts should be unit tested, and which parts can safely be left untested?

I spent a few hours Googling on this topic last night, and mostly found either tutorials on what TDD is, or examples of how to use JUnit, but nothing in the realms of advising what should actually be tested. It is entirely possible though, that I didn’t search hard enough or wasn’t looking for the right thing…

Answer 1

Don’t test the dummy implementations: they won’t be used in production. It makes no real sense to test them.

If the real UserService implementation does nothing else than go to a database and get the user name by its ID, then the test should test that it does that and does it correctly. Call it an integration test if you want, but it’s nevertheless a test that should be written and automated.

The usual strategy is to populate the database with minimal test data in the @Before annotated method of the test, and have you test method check that for an ID which exists in the database, the corresponding user name is returned.