I’ve never written a proper test until now, only small programs that I would dispose of after the test succeeded. I was looking through Python’s unittest module and tutorials around the web, but something’s not clear to me.
How much should one TestCase cover? I’ve seen examples on the web that have TestCase classes with only one method, as well as classes that test almost the entire available functionality.
In my case, I’m trying to write a test for a simple bloom filter. How do you think I should organize my test cases?
To put it simple: one unit test should cover single feature of your program. That’s all there is to say. That’s why they’re called unit tests.
Of course, what we understand by feature may vary. Think about smallest parts of your program that might break or not work as expected. Think about business requirements of your code. Those are parts that you want each to be covered by dedicated unit test.
Usually, unit tests are small, isolated and atomic. They should be easy to understand, they should fail/pass independently from one another, and should execute fast. Fairly good indication of proper unit tests is single assertion – if you find yourself writing more, you probably test too much and it’s a sign you need more than one test for given feature. However, this is not a strict rule – the more complex code is involved, the more complex unit tests tend to be.
When writing tests, it’s easy to split your code functionality and test those separated parts (this should give you the idea of atomicity of your tests). For example, if you have a method that verifies input then calls a service and finally returns result, you usually want to have all three (verify, call, return) steps covered.