Fixturate

Author: Roman Garcia romangarciam@gmail.com

About

Fixturate is a library that allows you to define test fixtures for your model in an easy / reusable way.

It really just is a text format and a convention to declare datasets to be used in testing. Similar to Rails / Play fixtures, but instead of YAML markup, a simpler text format, similar to Java Properties, but with a few extensions.

Quick Start

• Each model class needs to define it's own fixtures in a file located and named after the class, but with extension .fixtures
• In the fixture file, you declare different scenarios, and for each scenario you declare model properties
• Properties names use the JavaBean convention, and should be valid Java identifiers
• To inject a Constructor, declare properties using the same order they are declared in the constructor
• Literal properties can be String (using '"' quote character), Long, Double, Boolean or Enums
  • aStringProperty = "This is a valid String, always with quotes"
  • aLongProperty = 360
  • aDoubleProperty = 3.14
  • aBooleanProperty = true
  • anEnumProperty = NANOSECONDS
• Enum container type is inferred from type to be injected
• References to other model fixtures are declared using a special syntax: '$[scenario]'
  • aUserRefProperty = $[user with valid credentials]
• Lists / Sets are declared using a comma separator between values
  • aLiteralListProperty = "This", "is", "a", "list"
  • aRefListProperty = $[scenario 1], $[scenario 2], $[scenario 3]
• Special scenario named "default" will be returned when no scenario is specified

Really early stages! I'm not even sure this crap is useful yet!

Example

User model -- basic Java with constructor and mutable properties

package fixturate.example;
public class User {
    private final String firstName;
    private final String lastName;
    private int age;
    private boolean alive;

    public User(String firstName, String lastName) {
        this.firstName = firstName;
        this.lastName = lastName;
    }

    public void setAge(int age) {
        this.age = age;
    }

    public void setAlive(boolean alive) {
        this.alive = alive;
    }

    public String getFirstName() {
        return firstName;
    }

    public String getLastName() {
        return lastName;
    }

    public int getAge() {
        return age;
    }

    public boolean isAlive() {
        return alive;
    }
}

User fixture (file fixturate/example/User.fixtures)

[john user alive]
firstName = "John"
lastName  = "Doe"
age       = 65
alive     = true

[jane user dead]
firstName = "Jane"
lastName  = "Doe"
age       = 60
alive     = false

Order model -- Java bean with constructor with reference to User

package fixturate.example;
public class Order {
    private final Long item;
    private final String description;
    private final User user;

    public Order(Long item, String description, User user) {
        this.item = item;
        this.description = description;
        this.user = user;
    }

    public Long getItem() {
        return item;
    }

    public String getDescription() {
        return description;
    }

    public User getUser() {
        return user;
    }
}

Order fixture (file fixturate/example/Order.fixtures)

[default]
item           = 4321
description    = "Just a default order"
user           = $[john user alive]

[product one for john]
item           = 1
description    = "Product One"
user           = $[john user alive]

[product two for jane]
item           = 2
description    = "Product Two"
user           = $[jane user dead]

Invoice Model -- another via constructor, this time with a Java Collection involved

package fixturate.example;

public enum InvoiceType {
    CREDIT, DEBIT, INVOICE
}

public class Invoice {
    private final Long number;
    private final List<Order> orders;
    private final InvoiceType invoiceType;

    public Invoice(Long number, List<Order> orders, InvoiceType invoiceType) {
        this.number = number;
        this.orders = orders;
        this.invoiceType = invoiceType;
    }

    public Long getNumber() {
        return number;
    }

    public List<Order> getOrders() {
        return orders;
    }

    public InvoiceType getInvoiceType() {
        return invoiceType;
    }
}

Invoice fixtures (file fixturate/example/Invoice.fixtures)

[invoice for john and jane]
number         = 1
orders    	   = $[product one for john], $[product two for jane]
invoiceType    = CREDIT

Usage

Java

import static dridco.tests.fixturate.java.Fixturate.*;

public class FixturateTest {

    @Test
    public void someInvoiceTest() throws Exception {
        JavaInvoice invoice = fixture(JavaInvoice.class).in("invoice for john and jane").get();
        assertEquals(1L, invoice.getNumber());
        assertEquals(2, invoice.getOrders().size());
    }

}

Scala

class FixtureSpec extends WordSpec with ShouldMatchers {
    "Fixture" should {
        "retrieve complete TestInvoice" in {
            val invoice = Fixture[TestInvoice].get("invoice for john and jane")
            invoice.number should be(1L)
            invoice.orders should have length (2)
            invoice.orders(0) should be(TestOrder(1L, "Product One", TestUser("John", "Doe")))
            invoice.orders(1) should be(TestOrder(2L, "Product Two", TestUser("Jane", "Doe")))
        }
    }
}

Build

This library uses SBT to compile / package.

See install instructions here

$> git clone https://github.com/romangarcia/fixturate.git fixturate

$> cd fixturate

$> sbt clean package

What's missing

• Support for Dates / JodaTime
• Support for Optional properties
• Model validation (make sure no properties are left null?)
• all, any, any(5)...allow creating several fixtures on one call
• Custom Parsers / Custom Converters
• Get rid of the commons-beans dependency
• Tool to export JavaBeans to fixtures datasets