Problem When Unit Testing with PMock

[Peter Hansen]

steven at lczmsoft.com wrote:
> Peter,
> 
> for a object foo who need a iterator to do a job,  i write test to make
> sure the foo correctlly used the iterator, so a simple empty iterator
> is not enough.  because in the case, i need to see if or not the foo
> called the iterator to get the proper data from it and do the proper
> translating on them.  so, the mock iterator i need should be such an
> iterator which can returns be iterated out a lot of test data as i
> willed.

See Terry's reply which referenced my posting to better understand
the point I was making.

> i guess you are not familar with unit testing.  

Your guess is wrong.

> we need mock objects
> not because they are hard to implemented, we need them to make the
> tests easy and fine.

Thanks for the tutorial. :-) I'm rather well acquainted
with unit testing and mock objects.

My point was merely that what Terry suggested did not act the
way I thought he was proposing that it acted, and I was
hoping to correct that.  Not having actually read and understood
your entire original question, I didn't know at the time and
still don't know what you *really* need, just that Terry's
suggestion looked like a bit of a brain fart. :-)

For what it's worth, I tend to be of the school that says that
overuse of mock objects is a "testing smell", and as part of
acting on that belief I avoid using generic mock objects.
Instead, I write minimal ones which are carefully customized
for a particular test, to make sure that the resulting mock
object's code clearly tells a reader of the test exactly what
it is trying to accomplish.  Generic mocks, on the other hand,
tend to get overused and rarely make the tests very readable,
IMHO.

-Peter