Entries Tagged as ColdSpring
A Coldfusion Transient Factory Example
Posted by Paul Marcotte | Tags: ColdFusion , ColdSpring , Design Patterns
When learning how to apply object oriented principles to ColdFusion development, one will assuredly encounter the subject of design patterns. Singleton, Factory, Strategy and Bridge are just some of the patterns that describe solutions to common problems in programming. For this example, I'll demonstrate a variation on the Factory Pattern for transient objects. What is a factory? At it's simplest, a factory encapsulates the creation of objects to provide a consistent api for clients. What is a transient object? A typical OO ColdFusion application will incorporate a combination of Singletons (one instance per application - often instantiated at application startup) and Transients (a per request object that is not maintained in a persistent scope).ColdSpring Reloaded
Posted by Paul Marcotte | Tags: ColdFusion , ColdSpring
Coldspring was the first Coldfusion-based "framework" that I integrated into my application development process. I can't claim to be an expert, but today I'll step up and try evangelism. Based on the popular Java Spring framework, Coldspring provides a solid foundation for applications with features like dependecy injection, aspect-oriented programing, remote proxy generation and more. If you already use ColdSpring, or want to learn how to use it, I highly recommend the new Quickstart Guide and Examples written by ColdSpring guru Brian Kotek. In addition to a new look and documentation update, version 1.2 is now final! Get ye to the Springery...My Approach to Test Driven Development Part 3 - Testing Against a Database
Posted by Paul Marcotte | Tags: ColdSpring , Database , MXUnit , Test Driven Development
Confidently unit testing code that relies on a database is troublesome. There are many different approaches and many opinions on the matter. I've previously written about using transactions to safely rollback the database after every test. This worked well for me at the time, but there are pitfalls in using that approach. Recently, I've done some more research on the subject and even attempted, without success, to integrate DBUnit into my database reliant unit tests. After some trial and error, I landed on the following approach that is a culmination of a few ideas I'd previously heard of, but never tried. The goal of this approach is to:- Run tests against a known data set.
- Reset the entire database prior to each test.
My Approach to Test Driven Development Part 2 - MXUnit, Coldspring and ColdMock
Posted by Paul Marcotte | Tags: ColdSpring , MXUnit , Test Driven Development
Like the title says, this post will include code samples for setting up an MXUnit test case using ColdSpring and ColdMock. The goal of any test case are to isolate the component under test as much as possible. I find ColdMock to be a simple and powerful tool for achieving test isolation. For this example, I created a test case for my ConfigFactory which I mentioned in a previous post. TheConfigFactory component has a constructor dependency on the Environment Config component developed by Rolando Lopez which makes this a good case for mocking.
A common convention for test cases is to add the suffix "Test" to match the test case to the component being tested. I have my own convention for setting up tests withColdSpring bean definitions which I keep in a similarly named xml file. All test cases extend the BaseTestCase which contains a couple of methods to simplify test configuration with ColdSpring. The full code of the of the BaseTestCase follows.
<cfcomponent displayname="tests.BaseTestCase" extends="mxunit.framework.TestCase" output="false">
<cfset variables.beansXML = "">
<cffunction name="setBeanFactory" access="private" output="false" returntype="void">
<cfargument name="beansXML" type="string" required="true">
<cfargument name="params" type="struct" required="false" default="#structnew()#">
<cfscript>
if ((not structkeyExists(request,"beanFactory")) or (comparenocase(variables.beansXML,arguments.beansXML) neq 0))
{
variables.beansXML = arguments.beansXML;
request.beanFactory = createObject("component" ,"coldspring.beans.DefaultXmlBeanFactory").init(StructNew(),arguments.params);
request.beanFactory.loadBeans(variables.beansXML);
}
</cfscript>
</cffunction>
<cffunction name="getBeanFactory" access="private" output="false" returntype="any">
<cfreturn request.beanFactory>
</cffunction>
</cfcomponent>
In the past I kept my ColdSpring reference in variables scope, but I found that when testing components based that rely on Transfer ORM, I can shave the time of tests considerably when I have multiple tests in the same test case. Whether you run the MXUnit HttpAntRunner, the eclipse plugin or a manually configured test suite within a browser they all run as a single request, so as you define more tests it helps to speed things up.
Here's what the ConfigFactoryTest.xml looks like.
<beans>
<bean id="mockFactory" class="tests.MockFactory" singleton="true" />
<bean id="EnvironmentConfig" factory-bean="MockFactory" factory-method="createMock">
<constructor-arg name="objectToMock">
<value>model.Environment</value>
</constructor-arg>
</bean>
<bean id="ConfigFactory" class="model.ConfigFactory">
<constructor-arg name="hostName">
<value>${hostName}</value>
</constructor-arg>
<constructor-arg name="environmentConfig">
<ref bean="EnvironmentConfig" />
</constructor-arg>
</bean>
</beans>
You can see how easy it is to mock the dependency using the ColdMock MockFactory. Below is the full code for my ConfigFacotry test case. The important thing to note is that the component display name is used to resolve the path to the ColdSpring bean definitions used in the test suite.
<cfcomponent displayname="tests.ConfigFactoryTest" extends="tests.BaseTestCase">
<cffunction name="setUp" access="public" returntype="void">
<cfset var beanDefFileLocation = expandPath('/' & Replace(GetMetadata(this).displayname,'.','/','all') & '.xml')>
<cfset var params = Structnew()>
<cfset params.hostName = "www.somedomain.com">
<cfset setBeanFactory(beanDefFileLocation,params)>
</cffunction>
<!--- Begin Specific Test Cases --->
<cffunction name="testGetSetting" access="public" returntype="void">
<cfscript>
var configFactory = "";
var env = getBeanFactory().getBean("EnvironmentConfig");
var settings = structNew();
settings["MyString"] = "my string";
env.mockMethod('getEnvironmentByUrl').returns(settings);
configFactory = getBeanFactory().getBean("ConfigFactory");
assertTrue(configFactory.getSetting("MyString") eq settings["MyString"]);
</cfscript>
</cffunction>
<cffunction name="testGetAllSettings" access="public" returntype="void">
<cfscript>
var configFactory = "";
var env = getBeanFactory().getBean("EnvironmentConfig");
var settings = structNew();
settings["MyString"] = "my string";
env.mockMethod('getEnvironmentByUrl').returns(settings);
configFactory = getBeanFactory().getBean("ConfigFactory");
assertTrue(StructCount(configFactory.getAllSettings()) eq 1);
</cfscript>
</cffunction>
<cffunction name="testOnMissingMethod" access="public" returntype="void">
<cfscript>
var configFactory = "";
var env = getBeanFactory().getBean("EnvironmentConfig");
var settings = structNew();
settings["MyString"] = "my string";
env.mockMethod('getEnvironmentByUrl').returns(settings);
configFactory = getBeanFactory().getBean("ConfigFactory");
assertTrue(configFactory.getMyString() eq settings["MyString"]);
</cfscript>
</cffunction>
<!--- End Specific Test Cases --->
</cfcomponent>
Most of my tests aren't this involved. Since my ConfigFactory has a constructor dependency on EnvironmentConfig, I pull it out of ColdSpring first, mock the getEnvironmentByUrl method to return a known structure before requesting the ConfigFactory. Truly powerful stuff!
I have attached a zip file of this sample test bed as an enclosure for folks to try out.
Dynamic Configuration with Environment Config And a Coldspring Config Factory
Posted by Paul Marcotte | Tags: ColdSpring , Configuration , Ideas
When developing web application, it is very likely that at some point you will need to create dynamic configuration for your application in terms of development, staging and production environments. I recently discovered the excellent Environment Config project by Rolando Lopez. Rolando has created a very interesting package with lots of robust features for configuring your application dynamically. There are portions of the package that I must admit, I'm not using (yet). What follows is my current setup for integrating the environment config with a custom factory.