Learned helplessness in the workplace.

A recent article from Mark Needham presents an interesting view on how to construct code within tests, and the impact that might have on how tests drive design of code.

In the 14th comment to the original article, JJ calls for a real-world example – this is a good idea which should help ground the discussion and diffuse the temptation to communicate in abstract principles. In the spirit of this request, I will describe an example based on problems I faced in a previous job.

The first version of the system we were working on consisted of a server component, coded in Java, which provided remote services to several client systems. Each of the client systems was a Java web application, responsible for providing customer-specific web pages and navigation using the services and content provided by the central server. For some customers there would be just one instance of the web client, for others with greater load there would be several.

The server system was responsible for managing products for sale, including descriptions in multiple languages, format and compatibility meta-data, thumbnail images in several sizes, prices in multiple currencies. As well as access to individual items and collections, a search facility provided a way to discover or look up products. The server also managed customer details and purchase histories, and handled both delivery of content and general messaging (by email and SMS) during the purchase process. The client systems were responsible for display and navigation of a product catalogue, customer branding, “shopping cart”, login/logout, and everything else a user experiences.

The API between client and server included ways to list products by category, fetch details of specific products, search using a variety of criteria, make and cancel purchases, fetch and update user data and so on.

I suggest this should be a reasonable system on which to base a discussion – it embodies similar concepts to many other systems, and is neither trivial nor impossible to build. Interestingly, both SOAP and REST versions of the interface between the clients and the server were implemented at different points in the life of the product.

So, on to versioning. It seems to me that there are several kinds of changes which might require versioning. I will list a few here, but I welcome suggestions for others I might have missed.

• The first deployment of the system worked with only a single currency. The move to multiple currencies was a potentially major change in the interaction between client and server, even though each client works only in a single currency.
• The customer for one client implementation required the provision of extra services, specific to their market, which were not required by (and should not be available to) other clients.
• The initial version of the search facility returned data for all matches, with paging through the results implemented entirely on the client. When there was a lot of data in the catalogue this became an unacceptable performance bottleneck, especially as results beyond the first few pages were hardly ever viewed. An alternative approach was suggested where a client would request a specified page (of a specified page size) from the search results. This required changes in both the search request and search results.
• A new source of products introduced the idea of collections. Items in a collection could be purchased individually or as a bundle. Viewing a collection while browsing, searching, or in a user’s purchase history, should allow a user to “drill in” to the collection to view the items within it. Items located while searching should indicate how to purchase the collection, as well as how to purchase the individual item.

Is this a useful amount of detail for a scenario? I have my own experiences of working with this system and the choices we made, but I’d love to read any suggestions for how you might handle any of the transitions above in a live system with multiple client systems deployed, many of which can not be changed easily or often, and a server full of historical purchase data. Procedural remoting approaches (SOAP, XML-RPC and Java RMI etc.) and resource-based approaches (REST) are all welcome.

Snakes on the Web

The article is an enthusiastic call to action for “Pythonistas”, but also a really useful summary of big problems and issues applicable to any language, framework or development approach. Read it, even if just for the excellent (and scary) summary of all the things a modern web application developer needs to be aware of.

Recently, software and business pundit Joel Spolsky has waded in, with his take on the importance of  a “program manager”.

How to be a program manager – Joel on Software.

First, let’s set the scene. In TDD the rules are very simple: No production code is written without a failing test; just enough code is written to satisfy the current set of tests; duplication is mercilessly refactored. TDD is a very powerful and effective technique which can improve both the quality and delivery time of software. HTTP and REST interfaces provide access to a system or component using the HTTP protocol. This access may be by fetching HTML or WML pages, for example, or it may be by sending, receiving and updating resources in some other format such as XML or JSON.

For a first scenario imagine we have an existing HTTP interface for which we want to write a client using TDD. This service is relatively simple to start with. To send a message requires a POST request to a particular URL with two parameters “destination” and “text”. If the destination is valid, the text message is sent to the destination and a “200″ status code is returned. If the destination is not recognized, a “404″ status code is returned. This interface is so simple that it is tempting to just write the client, test it manually and move on. But if we were to do that, then we might not think of all the test case possibilities, and there would be no regression tests to help protect the software from unexpected side-effects later. So we opt to do the right thing, and use TDD.

For the sake of simplicity, I will assume we are using the Stringtree HTTPClient as described in an earlier post. So let’s start with a simple test to make sure the code compiles and the test libraries and stuff are in place:

import org.stringtree.http.*;
 
public class MessageSendingTest extends junit.framework.TestCase {
  public void testExceptionFromUnknownURL() {
    Form form = new Form();
    form.put("destination", "name@example.com");
    form.put("text", "hello from HTTP");
    HTTPClient client = new HTTPClient();
    try {
      client.post("http://localhost:9999/send", form);
      fail("should throw an exception");
    } catch (Exception e) {}
  }
}

This test serves two purposes. First, compiling it helps drive the structure of the test case, what classes need to be imported and so on. Second it documents the expected behaviour of our client if the server is not running or not where it is expected to be. I always like to start with this sort of “null” test case wherever possible. Once we get this test working we are ready to move on to the next step, testing against an actual server.

It might be possible to test against a real server, perhaps by manually examining log files, or checking the actual receipt of a message. Feel free to do that, but understand that that is really integration testing rather than unit testing, and neither helps us design and debug the client, nor document and enforce the proper behaviour of our code once we move on to other work. To gain these benefits we need a server which may be started, examined and stopped quickly and under the control of a simple unit test. This is where Mojasef comes in.

Mojasef is a server and web application framework designed for efficient test-driven development of web applications. Although usually used for building applications, it is just as suitable for building test harnesses. In this case we will build a simple application which implements the HTTP interface described above. And yes, we will do it using TDD, so we leave the MessageSendingTest for the moment and start a new one to drive our test harness without requiring HTTP. As usual, I start with a “null” test to get started:

public class MessageHarnessTest extends junit.framework.TestCase {
  MessageHarness harness;
 
  public void setUp() {
    harness = new MessageHarness();
  }
 
  public void testNoAction() {
    assertFalse(harness.wasCalled());
  }
}

This won’t compile without a MessageHarness class, so let’s make the minimum necessary.

public class MessageHarness {
  public boolean wasCalled() {
    return false;
  }
}

Good, our test now runs, so let’s add some behaviour. First another test:

  public void testCalledWithoutArguments() {
    harness.send();
    assertTrue(harness.wasCalled());
  }

To make this compile we need to add another method to MessageHarness

  public void send() {
  }

Our new test fails, so we need to make it work.

public class MessageHarness {
  private boolean called = false;
 
  public boolean wasCalled() {
    return called;
  }
 
  public void send() {
    called = true;
  }
}

That seems enough to start with. Now back to the main test case. Add a new test to call the application we have just built over HTTP and check that all the communication stuff works. With a bit of refactoring to keep the tests clean and duplication low.

import org.stringtree.http.*;
import org.stringtree.mojasef.standalone.InlineServer;
 
public class MessageSendingTest extends junit.framework.TestCase {
  HTTPClient client;
  Form form;
  InlineServer server;
  MessageHarness app;
 
  public void setUp() throws Exception {
    client = new HTTPClient();
    form = new Form();
    app = new MessageHarness();
    server = new InlineServer(app, "9998");
    server.start();
  }
 
  public void tearDown() {
	server.halt();
  }
 
  public void testExceptionFromUnknownURL() {
    form.put("destination", "name@example.com");
    form.put("text", "hello from HTTP");
    try {
      client.post("http://localhost:9999/send", form);
      fail("should throw an exception");
    } catch (Exception e) {}
  }
 
  public void testHarnessWiring() throws Exception {
    form.put("destination", "unknown@example.com");
    form.put("text", "hello from HTTP");
    assertFalse(app.wasCalled());
    client.post("http://localhost:9998/send", form);
    assertTrue(app.wasCalled());
  }
}

This probably needs a bit of explanation. The MessageHarness class we produced above is a Mojasef web application. Really, without any other configuration, base classes or nonsense. It’s just a “plain old Java object” (POJO). The job of the Mojasef code is to take an object of that class and make its methods available as HTTP URLs.

To serve it over HTTP we could use a MojasefServlet and run it in any Servlet Container, but for this test we want an ultra-light server which can be started and stopped in a test. So we use the InlineServer provided in the Mojasef jar. It’s a real HTTP server which you can use from a regular web browser, but it’s mainly designed for streamlined use in tests.

This server is configured to serve the MessageHarness application on port 9998. Having configured the server we start it in startUp and stop it in tearDown to ensure that nothing is left behind between tests.

The new test makes a HTTP request to the freshly started server, then checks (by calling the MessageHarness method we created earlier) that the test harness application was successfully called. This verifies that the server has been correctly started and called.

It’s still not really testing the message API. To do that we need more tests.

Now, we know from the introduction above that our resource should return a HTTP 404 (“not found”) error if we try to send to an unrecognised address.

  public void test404FromUnknownDestination() throws Exception {
    form.put("destination", "unknown@example.com");
    form.put("text", "hello from HTTP");
    Document result = client.post("http://localhost:9998/send", form);
    assertEquals("404", result.getHeader(HTTPClient.HTTP_RESPONSE_CODE));
  }

Making this test work is pretty simple, especially as we have no other tests which say anything about the HTTP Response code. The only “cleverness” is that we now need to use some slightly smarter features of the Mojasef code.

import org.stringtree.finder.StringKeeper;
import org.stringtree.mojasef.HTTPConstants;
 
public class MessageHarness {
  private boolean called = false;
 
  public boolean wasCalled() {
    return called;
  }
 
  public void send(StringKeeper context) {
    called = true;
    context.put(HTTPConstants.RESPONSE_CODE, "404");
  }
}

Mojasef will try a variety of ways to call a public method. We have seen the basic one – a method with no parameters mapped directly to a URL. This is another one – a method taking a “context” as an argument. This context will be pre-loaded with any POST or URL parameters, as well as any request headers and plenty of other stuff which is not of interest right now. This context also provides a way of setting information to be sent back to the client.

Now, our application code is passing all its tests, but it does so by returning a “404″ error code for all requests. This is not really desirable behaviour, so we need another test:

  public void test200FromKnownDestination() throws Exception {
    form.put("destination", "known@example.com");
    form.put("text", "hello from HTTP");
    Document result = client.post("http://localhost:9998/send", form);
    assertEquals("200", result.getHeader(HTTPClient.HTTP_RESPONSE_CODE));
  }

This test fails, so we need to modify the application to add some understanding of the supplied form data.

import org.stringtree.finder.StringKeeper;
import org.stringtree.mojasef.HTTPConstants;
 
public class MessageHarness {
  private boolean called = false;
 
  public boolean wasCalled() {
    return called;
  }
 
  public void send(StringKeeper context) {
    called = true;
    String destination = context.get("destination");
    if ("known@example.com".equals(destination)) {
        context.put(HTTPConstants.RESPONSE_CODE, "200");
    } else {
        context.put(HTTPConstants.RESPONSE_CODE, "404");
    }
  }
}

Now we reach an interesting point in the development process. It is perfectly feasible to continue in this vein, step-by-step bringing the application into existence. However, even the streamlined InlineServer still needs to set itself up, bind and unbind ports, deal with network traffic and so on. This is considerably slower than a regular method call, and as more tests are added the test case will continue to slow down.

The advantages of the Mojasef approach to web applications really begin to pay off at this point. The tests we already have prove the basics of HTTP Communication are working, so further tests do not really need to bother with HTTP, provided the tests are testing exactly the same code. Luckily (as pointed out earlier) a Mojasef application is just a regular Java class, which needs no modification to be tested using regular JUnit tests. Here are the same tests as above, but implemented as simple method calls:

import org.stringtree.finder.StringKeeper;
import org.stringtree.mojasef.HTTPConstants;
import org.stringtree.mojasef.HTTPConstants;
 
public class MessageProcessingTest extends junit.framework.TestCase {
  StringKeeper context;
  MessageHarness app;
 
  public void setUp() {
    context = new MapStringKeeper();
    app = new MessageHarness();
  }
 
  public void test404FromUnknownDestination() throws Exception {
    context.put("destination", "unknown@example.com");
    context.put("text", "hello from HTTP");
    app.send(context);
    assertEquals("404", context.get(HTTPConstants.RESPONSE_CODE));
  }
 
  public void test200FromKnownDestination() throws Exception {
    context.put("destination", "known@example.com");
    context.put("text", "hello from HTTP");
    app.send(context);
    assertEquals("200", context.get(HTTPConstants.RESPONSE_CODE));
  }

I shall stop there, leaving the development of the rest of the application to interested readers.

From the above steps, I hope you can see that the normal process of Test-Driven Development is quite possible for both web applications, and web-application clients. When using a framework which gets all the fiddly stuff out of the way it can even be as simple, quick and productive as in-process development.

Ted Neward points out that this is surely not true, and give some examples where software teams have a lot to learn from other fields such as management, sociology and anthropology.

Interoperability Happens – The Myth of Discovery

This is going in to my “don’t forget” collection, with
“6 reasons why a VC funded startup failed”

rebelutionary: Strategy is Something You Can Learn

Software Craftsmanship 2009 – Home

InfoQ: Brian Marick: What’s Missing From the Agile Manifesto