Tooling stack of testing Asp.MVC Views

“Craftsmen know their tools”

At last weeks Jim Counts did a session on Testing MVC Views with ApprovalTests.

[ watch the video here ]

While I am always happy to see more ApprovalTesting in the world, I was also impressed with the full tooling stack Jim used throughout the presentation.

Here’s the List

CassiniDev	Inline webserver
NCrunch	Continuous Test Runner
GitHub for Windows	Source Control
CruiseControl.Net	Continuous Integration
TortoiseDiff	Diff Viewer (part of TortoiseSVN)
Code Rush	Productivity Enhancement for Visual Studio
NuGet	.Net Package Manager

It was great to see this level of professionalism in a demo session; an area usually reserved for cowboy programming of hello world demos. Don’t get me wrong, Jim still does a simple “Hello World” type demo, but he applies all the rigor and professionalism I would want in a real project to that example.

Nicely done Jim, you’ve inspired me to raise my game, and hopefully others as well.

What’s new in Java ApprovalTests v.011

Today I Released ApprovalTests for Java v.011. Here's what new:

Approvals.Approve()  => Approvals.Verify()

I finally got around to fixing an early mistake in my naming convention.  Approvals.Approve() is now deprecated, and Approvals.Verify() is the new way to verify your result.

Mac OsX Diff Reporter Support

To help support my friends on the Mac Side, I have added a whole bunch of reporters for them. Including:

• DiffMergeReporter
• KaleidoscopeDiffReporter
• TkDiffReporter

What do you need to do to use these? Nothing, the regular DiffReporter will cascade appropriately to find the right one on you machine.

Machine Dependent Testing

If you have multiple environments, which render things differently,  you can now use the line

 NamerFactory.asMachineSpecificTest(new OsEnvironmentLabeller());

Which will add the machine OS as part of the approved & received file name. 

For Example:  ClassName.MethodName.Mac_OS_X.approved.txt

This will allow you different Golden Masters for different Environments.