My friend Jon is starting a training course in an effort to quickly bring developers up to speed on test driven development. As part of this effort, he has developed a unit test suite aimed at helping folks understand Rhino Mocks, a popular testing tool. After looking through the tests and seeing a lot of the Rhino API that I wasn’t familiar with, I wondered if there were similar undiscovered nooks in my favorite mocking framework: Moq. After getting permission, I took his tests that use Rhino Mocks and implemented them with Moq. It was a great exercise for not only learning the two APIs, but also for getting a side by side comparison of the frameworks. The differences in most cases are subtle, and ultimately I found the choice between each to be a matter of taste. You can find Jon’s tests here, and mine here.
Points of InterestMocks & Stubs?I’m in agreement with Jon that the differences between mocks and stubs are mostly semantic, and are best reserved for academic discussions. I called all the variables in my tests “mock” because the class for creating mocks and stubs with Moq is “Mock”.
API SurfaceThe reason I am such a fan of Moq is that the API “surface” is minimalistic. The methods I want to use most often are within clear sight and meaningful. There’s not a lot of extra jargon and noise that I have to think about. The methods that I use 20% of the time are tucked away in a manner that is still discoverable, but yet hidden enough to give me a signal that they’re not the first path I should choose. Read more: Codeplex
Points of InterestMocks & Stubs?I’m in agreement with Jon that the differences between mocks and stubs are mostly semantic, and are best reserved for academic discussions. I called all the variables in my tests “mock” because the class for creating mocks and stubs with Moq is “Mock”.
API SurfaceThe reason I am such a fan of Moq is that the API “surface” is minimalistic. The methods I want to use most often are within clear sight and meaningful. There’s not a lot of extra jargon and noise that I have to think about. The methods that I use 20% of the time are tucked away in a manner that is still discoverable, but yet hidden enough to give me a signal that they’re not the first path I should choose. Read more: Codeplex