Unit Testing – Best Way to Test Methods Calling Other Methods

cdesignunit testing

I was recently discussing with some friends which of the following 2 methods is best to stub return results or calls to methods inside same class from methods inside same class.

This is a very simplified example. In reality the functions are much more complex.

Example:

public class MyClass
{
     public bool FunctionA()
     {
         return FunctionB() % 2 == 0;
     }

     protected int FunctionB()
     {
         return new Random().Next();
     }
}

So to test this we have 2 methods.

Method 1:
Use Functions and Actions to replace functionality of the methods.
Example:

public class MyClass
{
     public Func<int> FunctionB { get; set; }

     public MyClass()
     {
         FunctionB = FunctionBImpl;
     }

     public bool FunctionA()
     {
         return FunctionB() % 2 == 0;
     }

     protected int FunctionBImpl()
     {
         return new Random().Next();
     }
}

[TestClass]
public class MyClassTests
{
    private MyClass _subject;

    [TestInitialize]
    public void Initialize()
    {
        _subject = new MyClass();
    }

    [TestMethod]
    public void FunctionA_WhenNumberIsOdd_ReturnsTrue()
    {
        _subject.FunctionB = () => 1;

        var result = _subject.FunctionA();

        Assert.IsFalse(result);
    }
}

Method 2:
Make members virtual, derive class and in derived class use Functions and Actions to replace functionality
Example:

public class MyClass
{     
     public bool FunctionA()
     {
         return FunctionB() % 2 == 0;
     }

     protected virtual int FunctionB()
     {
         return new Random().Next();
     }
}

public class TestableMyClass
{
     public Func<int> FunctionBFunc { get; set; }

     public MyClass()
     {
         FunctionBFunc = base.FunctionB;
     }

     protected override int FunctionB()
     {
         return FunctionBFunc();
     }
}

[TestClass]
public class MyClassTests
{
    private TestableMyClass _subject;

    [TestInitialize]
    public void Initialize()
    {
        _subject = new TestableMyClass();
    }

    [TestMethod]
    public void FunctionA_WhenNumberIsOdd_ReturnsTrue()
    {
        _subject.FunctionBFunc = () => 1;

        var result = _subject.FunctionA();

        Assert.IsFalse(result);
    }
}

I want to know wich is better and also WHY ?

Update:
NOTE: FunctionB can also be public

Best Answer

Edited following original poster update.

Disclaimer : not a C# programmer (mostly Java or Ruby). My answer would be : I would not test it at all, and I do not think you should.

The longer version is : private/protected methods are not parts of the API, they are basically implementation choices, that you can decide to review, update or throw away completely without any impact on the outside.

I suppose you have a test on FunctionA(), which is the part of the class that is visible from the external world. It should be the only one that has a contract to implement (and that could be tested). Your private/protected method has no contract to fulfil and/or test.

See a related discussion there : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/105007/should-i-test-private-methods-or-only-public-ones

Following the comment, if FunctionB is public, I'll simply test both using unit test. You may think that the test of FunctionA is not totally "unit" (as it call FunctionB), but I would not be too worried by that : if FunctionB test works but not FunctionA test, it means clearly that the problem is not in the subdomain of FunctionB, which is good enough for me as a discriminator.

If you really want to be able to totally separate the two tests, I would use some kind of mocking technique to mock FunctionB when testing FunctionA (typically, return a fixed known correct value). I lack the C# ecosystem knowledge to advice a specific mocking library, but you may look at this question.

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