Is there any sexier topic in software development than software testing? That is, besides game programming, 3D graphics, audio, high-performance clustering, cool websites, et cetera? Okay, so software testing is low on the list. And that's unfortunate, because good software testing can increase your productivity, improve your designs, raise your quality, ease your maintenance burdens, and help to satisfy your customers, coworkers, and managers. Perl has a strong history of automated tests. A very early release of Perl 1.0 included a comprehensive test suite, and it's only improved from there. Learning how Perl's test tools work and how to put them together to solve all sorts of previously intractable problems can make you a better programmer in general. Besides, it's easy to use the Perl tools described to handle all sorts of testing problems that you may encounter, even in other languages.
Like all titles in O'Reilly's Developer's Notebook series, this 'all lab, no lecture' book skips the boring prose and focuses instead on a series of exercises that speak to you instead of at you.
Perl Testing: A Developer's Notebook will help you dive right in and:
Write basic Perl tests with ease and interpret the results
Apply special techniques and modules to improve your tests
Bundle test suites along with projects
Test databases and their data
Test websites and web projects
Use the 'Test Anything Protocol' which tests projects written in languages other than Perl
With today's increased workloads and short development cycles, unit tests are more vital to building robust, high-quality software than ever before. Once mastered, these lessons will help you ensure low-level code correctness, reduce software development cycle time, and ease maintenance burdens.
You don't have to be a die-hard free and open source software developer who lives, breathes, and dreams Perl to use this book. You just have to want to do your job a little bit better.
Table of Contents
The Developer's Notebook Series
Preface
Chapter 1. Beginning Testing
Installing Test Modules
Running Tests
Interpreting Test Results
Writing Your First Test
Loading Modules
Improving Test Comparisons
Chapter 2. Writing Tests
Skipping Tests
Skipping All Tests
Marking Tests as TODO
Simple Data Structure Equality
Data Composition
Testing Warnings
Testing Exceptions
Chapter 3. Managing Tests
Organizing Tests
Checking Your Coverage
Writing a Testing Library
Testing a Testing Library
Writing a Testing Harness
Testing Across the Network
Automating Test Runs
Chapter 4. Distributing Your Tests (and Code)
Testing POD Files
Testing Documentation Coverage
Distribution Signatures
Testing Entire Distributions
Letting the User Decide
Letting the User Decide (Continued)
Bundling Tests with Modules
Collecting Test Results
Validating Kwalitee
Chapter 5. Testing Untestable Code
Overriding Built-ins
Mocking Modules
Mocking Objects
Partially Mocking Objects
Overriding Live Code
Overriding Operators Everywhere
Chapter 6. Testing Databases
Shipping Test Databases
Testing Database Data
Using Temporary Databases
Mocking Databases
Chapter 7. Testing Web Sites
Testing Your Backend
Testing Your Frontend
Record and Play Back Browsing Sessions
Testing the Validity of HTML
Running Your Own Apache Server
Testing with Apache-Test
Distributing Modules with Apache-Test
Chapter 8. Unit Testing with Test::Class
Writing Test Cases
Creating Test Fixtures
Inheriting Tests
Skipping Tests with Test::Class
Marking Tests as TODO with Test::Class
Chapter 9. Testing Everything Else
Writing Testable Programs
Testing Programs
Testing Interactive Programs
Testing Shared Libraries
Index
