Clean Test Class Code Review

test driven development, code reviews, software development

As a bonus Xmas gift this week, I completed my part of a code review of a developer’s code before heading out Friday. The code review primarily covered a JSF backing bean/controller and a corresponding test case. Even though the tests had mostly been written after the test case was just a joy to read:

• Clear test names.
• Only 2-4 lines of code for most of the tests.
• Thorough testing of negative conditions like testDuplicateRefundsOnlyCountOnce().
• 99% unit test coverage according to Clover.

The only thing I was able to catch was a printLines() method that had been used when writing the tests to output something to the console. The method was still hanging around and didn’t actually do anything because the System.out.println()s had already been removed.

Ed Gibbs @ December 25, 2006