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POHow can I effectively test against the Windows API?
 

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  1. POHow can I effectively test against the Windows API?
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    <p>I'm still having issues justifying TDD to myself. As I have mentioned in other questions, 90% of the code I write does absolutely nothing but</p> <ol> <li>Call some Windows API functions and</li> <li>Print out the data returned from said functions.</li> </ol> <p>The time spent coming up with the fake data that the code needs to process under TDD is incredible -- I literally spend 5 times as much time coming up with the example data as I would spend just writing application code.</p> <p>Part of this problem is that often I'm programming against APIs with which I have little experience, which forces me to write small applications that show me how the real API behaves so that I can write effective fakes/mocks on top of that API. Writing implementation first is the opposite of TDD, but in this case it is unavoidable: I do not know how the real API behaves, so how on earth am I going to be able to create a fake implementation of the API without playing with it?</p> <p>I have read several books on the subject, including Kent Beck's Test Driven Development, By Example, and Michael Feathers' Working Effectively with Legacy Code, which seem to be gospel for TDD fanatics. Feathers' book comes close in the way it describes breaking out dependencies, but even then, the examples provided have one thing in common:</p> <ul> <li>The program under test obtains input from other parts of the program under test.</li> </ul> <p>My programs do not follow that pattern. Instead, the only input to the program itself is the system upon which it runs.</p> <p>How can one effectively employ TDD on such a project? I'm already wrapping most of the API inside C++ classes before I actually use that API, but sometimes the <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2531874/how-might-i-wrap-the-findxfile-style-apis-to-the-stl-style-iterator-pattern-in-c">wrappers themselves can become quite complicated</a>, and deserve their own tests.</p>
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    1. COThis sounds like a case of "if the only tool I have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail". Perhaps you can disregard TDD when playing with the API and when you get some kind of feeling for how it works, wrap it in an interface and provide a mockup implementation for the API for testing purposes and do the TDD on the application that uses the interface.
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      1. POHow can I effectively test against the Windows API?
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    2. COI have been in the same boat before and I don't have a good solution. However, at least even if you write the implementation first, and then write the tests based on how the implementation behaves(can automate with code generation), you are creating a safety net that will warn you if you change something later down the line that breaks the pre-existing behavior. This is really useful if you have alot of code reuse, but find yourself having to update reusable code to make it apply to new scenarios. The prexisting unit tests will ensure you don't break anything with your "improvements".
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    3. CO@Laserallan: That is what I'm doing. I don't have a problem not using TDD on the little throwaway test programs. I do have a problem having to write tons of little throwaway test applications.
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