Question

What frameworks and tools would you recommend for unit-testing and mock objects in Perl?

I have an existing Perl application, that mainly does database access, reading and writing files. The application is basically a batch job type of application, it reads in bunch of stuff from files and database and writes a bunch of new files and some stuff to database.

The application currently does not have any unit-test, but I’d like refactor application to have good unit tests.

What frameworks and tools would you recommend for unit-testing and mocking objects? For example something similar to Hamcrest and JMock of Java?

Also, are there any good BDD (Behaviour Driven Development) based testing frameworks for Perl?

Answer 1

In terms of test frameworks, I like to use Test::Class, which lets you set up nice unit test hierarchies in a manner similar to JUnit. The linked documentation gives a pretty good overview, though if you’re not already familiar with Perl testing conventions, check out the documentation for Test::Simple and TAP, which is the standard output format for Perl tests.

For mocking, there is Test::Mock::Class, which is useful for setting up mock classes for libraries outside your direct control, like CPAN modules that your application relies on.

There is also the excellent Test::MockDBI which provides special facilities for mocking your database stuff.