Code Slinger - FlexUnit

Wanted: Technical Writers with Free Time and an Altruistic Spirit

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:19:00 -0400

As many of you know, I am the project lead for FlexUnit 4.x. The technical side of the project is in great shape with new features, releases and tests forthcoming, however, the place we are really lagging is good documentation.

Right now the FlexUnit team is quite small and 120% of our time is occupied with development and user support. Unfortunately this means that the best engineered plans for good documentation seem to get farther behind as the days go on.

We are looking for a few people who would be willing to own large chunks of the documentation. We would arrange conference calls as needed with the developers of key sections to talk through approach, technical details and future plans. The goal would be to ensure you have a full understanding and access to anyone you need when writing. Ultimately, it would also give you a few things.

First, you would have unlimited access to learn FlexUnit at a very, very deep level. Second, you could help create a volume of work (I am hoping we can produce both wiki content and eventually a comprehensive PDF book) which will continue to be attributed to you. Third, that attribution plus future recommendations from myself and others on the team and in this industry are guaranteed (and very helpful for future interviews).

Anyone who is seriously interested should leave a comment on this post and I will reach out to you immediately.

If you want to take a look at our current efforts, head over to docs.flexunit.org

Thanks,
Labriola

FlexUnit 4.1 Beta 1 Now Available

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 18:31:00 -0400

For months now the core FlexUnit team and contributors have been working diligently to move the next release of FlexUnit forward. The 4.0 release was a success but we always knew there were many optimization and enhancement still to come. Today, we are happy to announce some of those are available as the 4.1 public beta begins. You can download the latest bits from the flexunit.org download site. Here are a few feature descriptions and bullet points of some of the new features in the FlexUnit 4.1 world.

Parameterized Testing

There are times when you need to repeat a test across a series of data points. Imagine a class that does a complex calculation based on input values. It is likely that you would want to test hundreds or thousands of different input values, checking each of their expected outputs to feel comfortable that this class was behaving properly. Or, perhaps you have a whole series of components which implement an interface and you wish to verify that setting the 'x' property on each of those objects dispatches and expected event or updates a given property. These are both cases where Parameterized testing can simplify your life. [More]

FlexUnit in Flash Builder Bugs plus TDD

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:31:00 -0400

I just finished my presentation materials for my Test-driven development session at Adobe Max, and I am pretty excited how it turned out. It is a 90-minute BYOL (Bring your own laptop) lab, which is always challenging. Each person showing up with a diverse setup and (hopefully) our files installed.

So, if you are planning to head to Max, and you are interested in TDD, try to attend. I think it will be well worth the effort.

That said, there will also be two sessions at the 360|Flex Max unconference where we will be reviewing the FlexUnit 4 framework from the inside out. The goal here is to provide initial context for those interested in becoming committers on the project. FlexUnit 4 is a highly functional testing framework, but it is also complex. Until we have the chance to document every corner, this might be your best chance to learn the ins and outs of it.

Finally, working on this session has given me the opportunity to work with the FlexUnit plugin in Flash Builder. I must say I am very pleased with how this is evolving. Nonetheless, there are a few enhancements I would still like. If you are of a like mind, read through the bugs and cast your vote.

Auto Refresh of the flex unit compiler application when deleting a test case or (minimally) re-running the wizard
Right now deleting a test case causes a manualy compilation error that needs resolution. I think this could be more elegant.
Uncheck Create Constructor by default in FU4 test case
Just a minor inconvenience. You generally don't need constructors in FU4 test cases, so you uncheck a checkbox... often
Generate Before/After in place of setup/teardown for FU4 testcases
Right now the wizards don't know how to generate the FU4 equivalent of setUp() and tearDown(). Not a big deal, but I think it's low-hanging fruit.
Remember Last Selected Type when creating test cases from the wizard
Just a minor inconvenience. You always need to re-select the radio button when using the wizard with FU4.

If you agree, vote away.

Hope to see you at Max,
Mike

FlexUnit 4 and Flex 4 presentations galore

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:56:00 -0400

So after a very welcomed summer lull in travel, I am gearing up for the fall speaking season. A good portion of my time this fall will be spent discussing, encouraging the use of, and getting Feedback on the FlexUnit 4 project. The rest will be spent teaching about the early architecture and internals of the future Flex 4 product.

If you have tried either of these and want to discuss, or if you haven't had the time and want to learn more first, please come and support one of the following great events where I will be presenting.

September 5th, Rimini, Italy at Flash Camp on the Beach

Testing with Flex and Flash Builder October 5th - 7th, Los Angeles, CA at Adobe Max, Los Angeles, CA

360|Max unconference

October 15th and 16th in Omaha, NE at the Heartland Developers Conference

October 17th and 18th in Raleigh, North Carolina at CFinNC

Next Generation Testing

I hope you have the opportunity to participate and engage with the Flex community at some of these community events.

Cheers,
Mike

FlexUnit 4 Beta 2 is finally here (and it likes your CI Server)

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:02:00 -0400

Alright, it has been an insane few months but we are ready. FlexUnit 4 Beta 2 is now available on the adobe open source site. You can download the turnkey project to play with built libraries quickly or follow the directions on the Source page to grab the source yourself.

There are a huge number of fixes and enhancements in this version, all of which you can find for yourself on the release notes page but the largest change of note is the availability of CI tasks and a CI listener to allow easy hooks into the continuous integration system of your choice. A lot of hard work went into building and vetting these out on different platforms but I wanted to call out a few names in particular.

First, thanks to Peter Martin, because all of this was based on his original work for the FlexUnit .9 tasks. Second, thanks to Joe Adkins, Conrad Winchester, Brian LeGros, Xavi Beumala and Simeon Bateman all of who contributed to development, testing and/or generally being good spirits despite inevitable development slow-downs and hiccups. This is beta code, so there are a couple of caveats and to-do items still on the list, so please be sure to check out the README file in the sample project, or read it on the wiki.

So, take a few minutes, grab the bits and play around. If you have any questions or comments, in particular around the new CI tasks, head over to the FlexUnit forums. If you believe we mutually disagree on the definition of a functional feature, then please log it into the bug database.

This is a completely community run project and your help and support are always welcome.

Cheers,
Labriola

FlexUnit 4 and Flash Builder 4

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:49:00 -0400

So, suppose you are the kind of person who has downloaded the FlexUnit 4 turnkey beta from opensource.adobe.com. Suppose you are also the type of person who downloaded the new Flash Builder 4 beta from labs.adobe.com. Well then perhaps you are thinking to yourself, "Self, I would really like to see the results from my FlexUnit 4 tests right inside of the FlexUnit Result view in Flash Builder. I wonder how I would do that."

Well, I would personally suggest you add the following import to your FlexUnit4Turnkey.mxml file:


import org.flexunit.runner.notification.async.XMLListener;

And then add the following line before your call to the run method of the FlexUnit 4 core.


core.addListener( new XMLListener( "FlexUnit4Turnkey" ) );

Ideally, it will look something like this:


core = new FlexUnitCore();
core.addListener( new XMLListener( "FlexUnit4Turnkey" ) );
core.run( FlexUnit4Suite, HamcrestSuite, FlexUnitIn360  );

Where the string "FlexUnit4Turnkey" represents the name of the project where this MXML file resides. If you open the FlexUnit Results view in Flash Builder and execute this MXML file, you will see the results in Flash Builder.

Unfortunately, you need to be aware of some of limitations. First, Flash Builder doesn't know how to generate these tests yet and will currently fail if you click any of the buttons such as Run All Completed Tests, Run All Failed Tests, etc. We can just give it back information about the success and failure, Flash Builder doesn't yet know how to choose, run or specify FlexUnit 4 tests. Also, and perhaps more severely, Flash Builder considers any Ignored tests a pseudo-failure. Truthfully, it just doesn't understand what we mean, so, in some cases, it looks like a failure, but in others it doesn't.

Right now, FlexUnit 4 beta still also outputs to the console, which means Flash Builder will try to keep switching you over to the console view, but this will be a little cleaner in our (FlexUnit's) next beta drop. In either case, it is perhaps a bit of a novelty for the moment, but it demonstrates the power of the listener model that FlexUnit 4 uses. Wait till you see the stuff coming for Continuous Integration :)

Cheers and have fun,
Labriola

FlexUnit 4 in 360 seconds

Sun, 03 May 2009 22:57:00 -0400

About a year back I remember reading a blog post called JUnit in 60 seconds. At the time I pondered how great it would be to have these features in Flex. Little did I know that today I would be writing this post introducing the Flex world to FlexUnit 4.

So, first a little background. FlexUnit 4 is the name for an upcoming release of FlexUnit. It represents the best features of the FlexUnit project combined with the best features of the Fluint project. It is built on top of a newly created foundation designed to support the latest techniques used in the JUnit testing community, but written for the specific requirements and needs of the Flash Player. Top all that off with an extensibility layer that encourages developers to create new types of test runners and extensions while simplify the process of integrating the results into IDEs and continuous integration environments, and it should give you an idea why I am excited about this release.

If it sounds interesting to you as well, the public alpha of this upcoming release is now available as a turnkey test project you can download from the adobe open source site. I hope you will use it to learn and explore the new features, and to provide feedback about any bugs you find along the way. However, it is an alpha, so locations and names of classes, signatures of methods and even which features are supported are all subject to change before release. It is not be advisable to use this as your production testing system.

Speaking of features, let's jump in. There is a bit more content to go through than the original 60 second tutorial, so, I think you will need 4-6 minutes to get through it all. To keep things consistent, many of these examples are adapted right from the JUnit in 60 seconds site referenced above.

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