vest - Vala Testing framework

Vest is a Test-Driven Development framework for the vala programming language.

Let's write some tests

Create a new class derived from io.github.jorchube.vest.TestSuite, override the testCases() method and define your tests:

using io.github.jorchube.vest;

namespace awesome.namespace
{
    class MyTestSuite : TestSuite
    {
        public override void testCases ()
        {
            test("It_passes", () =>
            {
                Assert.true(1 == 1);
            });

            test("It_fails", () =>
            {
                Assert.true(1 == 2);
            });
        }
    }
}

What can vest do for you?

Multiple test suites

Vest lets you define multiple test suites for your project, each one with as many test cases as you want.

Assertions

Vest comes with an Assert class that provides a basic set of assertion methods for your tests:

• Assert.raises
• Assert.true
• Assert.false
• Assert.equals
• Assert.null
• Assert.notNull

Mock methods

Vest allows you to mock methods of your test stubs and provides useful methods to check the interactions of the tested code with your stub so that you don't have to write it:

Write your stub class:

    public class AStub : AnInterface
    {
        public MethodMock<int, string> aMethodMock;

        public AStub()
        {
            aMethodMock = new MethodMock<int, string>();
        }

        public string TheMethodYouWantToMock(int arg)
        {
            return aMethodMock.call(arg);
        }
    }

Use it in your test:

    test("Testing a method mock", () =>
    {
        AStub stub = new AStub();

        stub.aMethodMock.returns(1, "one");
        stub.aMethodMock.returns(2, "two");

        Assert.equals("one", stub.aMethod(1));
        Assert.equals("two", stub.aMethod(2));

        Assert.equals(2, stub.aMethodMock.numCalls());
        Assert.true(stub.aMethodMock.calledWith(1));
        Assert.true(stub.aMethodMock.calledWith(2));
        Assert.false(stub.aMethodMock.calledWith(4));
    });

You can take a look at the project tests to see all the possibilities.

Okay, but how do I use it?

You can just grab the sources or you can download a precompiled release which contains the files io.github.jorchube.vest.h, io.github.jorchube.vest.vapi and libio.github.jorchube.vest.a and incorporate them into your project.

To execute the tests you will need to define a main method in which initialize Vest, add the test suites and run them:

using io.github.jorchube.vest;

namespace awesome.namespace
{
    public static void main()
    {
        Vest.init();

        Vest.addSuite(new MyTestSuite());

        Vest.addSuite(new MyOtherTestSuite());

        Vest.run();
    }
}

Vest will execute all the test cases from each test suite and return 0 on success or 1 on failure.

Additionally Vest will generate a minimal test_results.xml compatible with JUnit and write a summary on standard output such as this one:

As a starting point you can take a look at the meson.build of Vest itself or the one provided in the templates folder:

Getting started with a release:

Download a release and try to build and run the sample project in the templates folder:

curl -LkO "https://github.com/jorchube/vest/releases/download/0.1.2/vest-release-0.1.2.tar.gz"
tar xvf vest-release-0.1.2.tar.gz 
cd templates/
meson build
ninja -C build
./build/some.project.tests

Getting started with the sources:

Grab the sources and try to run the Vest tests:

git clone https://github.com/jorchube/vest.git
cd vest/
meson build
ninja -C build
./build/io.github.jorchube.vest.tests

FAQ

But why?

Some months ago started a project and chose vala. I knew that GLib has some support for writting tests but I really didn't like it that much to be honest. So the only logical step (of course!) in my mind was to develop my own testing tools With blackjack! And h*****s!.

The setup is not that straightforward...

You are very welcome to help.

Why mocking methods instead of classes?

As far as I know, vala does not have full introspection support, so I don't see how I would do it.

Why you haven't used GObject-Introspection?

I am not even sure if the question itself makes sense. Anyway, you are very welcome to help.

Now clone the repository and start tinkering!