RE: [Musing] Offline mode

[Vincent Massol <vm...@octo.com>]

Hi Jason,

Err.... I'm a bit late on the answer... :-) <embarrassed grin/>

I think you are right as you may have guessed from the fact that nothing
was done about this offline feature... I think it is a bit too early and
not clear enough in my head yet. I've also been working on other
things... I'm sure we'll come back to this a bit later. ATM there are
too many things already happening in Cactus land and we need to wrap up
the 1.5 release (which contains some major usability changes).

Thanks and please accept my apologies for not answering your email.
-Vincent

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robertson, Jason [mailto:Jason.Robertson@acs-inc.com]
> Sent: 20 November 2002 22:18
> To: 'Cactus Users List'
> Subject: RE: [Musing] Offline mode
> 
> I understand all the points you make as far as in- vs.
out-of-container,
> and
> I'm with ya on that part - Cactus tests are slow! :)
> 
> But, what I don't see is, to pick one specific example, is how would I
> test
> my EJBs? Or even how would I test my struts action classes? In both of
> these
> cases I have to validate data that was retrieved from the database,
> external
> systems, etc. And in my probably narrow view of the world, it seems
like
> any
> dynamic web-app would do something similar, and that most tests
validate
> that data was retrieved successfully and put into the
request/session/etc.
> appropriately. If I don't design mock objects to simulate the
retrieval of
> the data (which it doesn't sound like I would do in your description)
how
> does this happen? What am I validating?
> 
> Again, maybe I'm just not the right customer, because you speak of
finding
> errors not related to integration and I'm not seeing a clear example
of
> what
> kind of errors you'd be finding.
> 
> Jason
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vincent Massol [mailto:vmassol@octo.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 3:16 PM
> To: 'Cactus Users List'
> Subject: RE: [Musing] Offline mode
> 
> 
> Hi Jason,
> 
> The idea is simply productivity boost. Running a Cactus test takes
time
> whereas a mock one is fast. You can run around 400 mock objects tests
in
> a second whereas Cactus tests will take at least 10-20 seconds overall
> (or more. That's best time). Cactus tests yields more value as they
> really verify that it works. But MO tests are enough to find errors
not
> related to integration. Both are good and complementary.
> 
> The idea is to have the best of both worlds by writing only one test
(if
> possible, not sure yet how well this would be). That is you would run
> the tests quickly from your IDE as you type and from time to time you
> would run with online mode on to verify it does really work.
> 
> In practice I am using both MO and Cactus on my projects but I have to
> write against 2 frameworks.
> 
> Does it make sense?
> 
> Thanks
> -Vincent
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Robertson, Jason [mailto:Jason.Robertson@acs-inc.com]
> > Sent: 20 November 2002 18:35
> > To: 'Cactus Users List'
> > Subject: RE: [Musing] Offline mode
> >
> > Sorry to take so long to respond, but I'm not clear as to the full
> > benefits
> > of doing this. If I'm creating a servlet, and that servlet does
> nothing
> > involving certain container resources (i.e., connection pools, EJBs,
> > etc.),
> > then I could see how a "mock" container could work. But how often
does
> > this
> > happen?
> >
> > And I don't see at all how it could test JSPs (would the mock
> container
> > compile them into servlets?), or EJBs.
> >
> > The far majority of my cactus testing is testing EJBs, and will soon
> be
> > testing Struts action classes which will all use EJBs to get their
> data.
> > Am
> > I just not a potential "offline mode" user, and that's why I can't
see
> it?
> > Am I missing the big picture?
> >
> > Jason
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Vincent Massol [mailto:vmassol@octo.com]
> > Sent: Saturday, November 02, 2002 12:00 PM
> > To: 'Cactus Users List'
> > Cc: cactus-dev@jakarta.apache.org
> > Subject: [Musing] Offline mode
> >
> >
> > Hi Cactusers,
> >
> > Today I haven been thinking about Cactus and Mock Objects and more
> > specifically when to choose one over another, etc. The choice is not
> > always easy. In the past, I had thought about implementing an
offline
> > mode in Cactus, i.e. the ability to run the same cactus test without
a
> > container. Of course, it won't be integration unit testing any more
> but
> > the rationale is the following:
> >
> > * use the offline mode when coding in your favorite IDE. Run the
tests
> > very often.
> > * use the online mode to perform integration unit testing with your
> > target containers.
> > * The benefits over using an existing mock object library for
> > Servlet/JSP/Filter/EJBs API is evident: tests written using the
Cactus
> > API can run "as is" in in-container mode.
> >
> > Of course, not all tests should be run in both modes but a lot of
them
> > could.
> >
> > At that time I had dismissed the idea because I did not see how I
> could
> > do it and I did not see the real interest of doing so. It seems much
> > clearer now... :-)
> >
> > Here are some ideas:
> >
> > * The mode is specified by passing a JVM system parameter
> > (-Dcactus.offline=true)
> > * In offline mode, Cactus creates dummy (mock) Servlet implicit
> objects,
> > and filling them with the information it has (mostly from
WebRequest).
> > * In addition, the wrappers need to be extended (or added) to offer
> > methods to set the behaviours of the mocks. For example:
> > HttpServletRequestWrapper.setForwardResult(HttpServletResponse
> response,
> > OutputStream mockStream)
> > * In online mode, the setForwardResult() and such can be ignored.
> > However, if we want to refine this, we can also have an additional
> > HttpServletRequestWrapper.setForwardResult(HttpServletResponse
> response,
> > OutputStream mockStream, boolean useInOnlineMode) API that tells
> Cactus
> > to use this even in online mode. This can be handy when the JSP is
not
> > yet written and you still wish to perform integration unit tests.
> > * In offline mode, there is no HTTP connection to the server side
and
> > beginXXX(), testXXX() and endXXX() are all run on the client side.
> >
> > What do you think?
> >
> > -Vincent
> >
> >
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> 
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