AAAA Unit Testing

A while back Oren wrote about the Arrange, Act, Assert syntax for unit tests. I've seen several other discussions on this and I am not sure if he is the originator but I'll attribute him either way.

The syntax I most commonly use ressembles an Arrange, Assert, Act and Assert (AAAA) pattern.

• Arrange the system in it's initial configuration. Create any collaborators and mocks you may need. Initialize services.
• Assert that the initial state is correct. For me this is important since so many layer of dependencies exist in modern applications. This is analogous to a control group in the scientific method. In this step I would also test the inverse of later assertion such as the non-existence of objects that should only exist after the Act step.
• Act on the system by creating/deleting/updating new objects or invoking services.
• Assert again that the system is in it's expected state.

I've caught a lot of bugs using this method. Asserting the initial state may also be a good way to expose weakness' in the design.

Memcached for Monorail Update

Memcached for Monorail is a session replacement for the Castle::Monorail framework. It uses memcached on the back end for distributing the session across a web farm. I have added some additional notes about Memcached for Monorail. I have also uploaded a binary release. Although I recommend getting the source.

No time to discuss much more but feel free to ask questions and I'll answer them. The Memcached session provider is currently being used in a production environment with great success but it definitely has room for improvement. It's aimed squarely at extending the Castle::Monorail session so if you are looking for something more generic than please look else where...or consider switching to MVC with Castle::Monorail ;-)

Monorail installed on a 64bit OS

Installing Castle::Monorail on 64bit IIS7 proves to be much easier than I thought. You must use the 64bit handlers. To make this easy you can just add the handlers to your Web.Config:

  136   <system.webServer>

  137     <handlers>

  138       <add name="IconHandler" path="*.ico" verb="*" modules="StaticFileModule" resourceType="File" />      

  139       <add name="Monorail-64" 

  140            path="*" verb="*" 

  141            modules="IsapiModule" 

  142            scriptProcessor="%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\aspnet_isapi.dll" 

  143            resourceType="Unspecified" />

  144       <add name="Monorail" 

  145            path="*" verb="*" 

  146            modules="IsapiModule" 

  147            scriptProcessor="%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_isapi.dll" 

  148            resourceType="Unspecified" />

  149     handlers>
150   system.webServer>

As you can see above, I have added handler mappings for both the 64bit and the 32bit. Notice that the 64bit is listed first, this is important. The 64bit script processor is:

%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\aspnet_isapi.dll

A more detailed overview can be found at BitterCoder.