I’ve only recently started coding Android apps but I’ve started to put together a set of pages describing how I’ve overcome some of the problems I’ve encountered. I hope they’ll be useful to other developers.
So what’s the best way to stub out your data classes so that your business logic tests don’t break because they’re ultimately dependent on a test database over which you have little or no control? Well DbUnit’s been around for a while and TestNG has a DataProvider annotation that might be useful. But I haven’t found anything that uses the instrument package introduced in JDK1.5 despite the fact that it presents the opportunity for a really simple solution. The interface allows you to run some code prior to the main method and use that code to re-define classes. So you build against your actual data classes but execute your tests against replacements that don’t go anywhere near a database. Dive in by downloading this .zip file and looking at readme.txt; the structure’s covered in the diagram below.
I think this gives really good value: maximum control for minimal configuration and a few lines of code. I also think it slots in with any of the test frameworks you might already be using.
