Obviously a book about testing is going to have a few more entries.

Having never heard or experienced the effect before I wonder how many accidents are caused by driving in the late afternoon when the shadows are long.

]]> http://distributedlife.com/blog/2008/11/notes-on-travel-%e2%80%93-afternoon-driving.html/feed 0 http://distributedlife.com/blog/2008/11/notes-on-travel-%e2%80%93-late-checkouts.html http://distributedlife.com/blog/2008/11/notes-on-travel-%e2%80%93-late-checkouts.html#comments Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:55:03 +0000 Ryan Boucher http://distributedlife.com/blog/?p=175 If you can’t organise a later checkout and you don’t want to leave your bags somewhere for the day, book one room for an extra day and use that to sleep in and collect your wits, sober up, pack, etc. It makes the final day so much easier when you know you don’t have to rush.

For example:

$this->testAction('/testing/post?company=utCompany', array('return' => 'vars')) ;

will result in:

[url] => /testing/post?company=utCompany

While invoking the url directly via the web browser results in:

[url] => Array
(
[url] => testing/post
[company] => utCompany
)

The solution I found is a bit of a hack. There is meant to be a fix in the pipeline but it’s not in my build and I am not ready to update to RC3 (and I’m not even sure if the fix is in RC3). Either way there is no guarantee this feature will work beyond RC2

If the second testAction parameter includes a named array called ‘url’ then the values will be placed in the $this->params object in the controller. This gives us the same net result as when the controller is directly invoked. This is not documented in the CakePHP manual.

$data = array ('company' => 'utCompany') ;

$result = $this->testAction('/testing/post', array
(
'return' => 'vars',
'method' => 'get',
'url' => $data
)) ;

I originally asked this question on StackOverflow but had to answer it myself. Still I got four achievements out of that one question. Not a bad return on my investment.

The second problem relates to caching. It is summed up in this post by Wil Clouser called The Cache that wouldn’t quit. My problem was that I was taking a snapshot of my table before my query ran so I could validate the results. The query had only run just beforehand so CakePHP went to the cache and got my previously unchanged dataset. This one drove me spare. I always forget the cache when I test because my policy is that unless I am testing the cache, the cache is turned off.

The solution is fairly simple. The query command (of which I use a lot rather than CakePHP’s “automagic”) accepts a second parameter called “false”. When supplied it turns caching off.

This still leaves you with a problem because you want to call methods in your model. Your model can’t default to no-cache otherwise your prod code wouldn’t have any caching. The easiest solution I came up with is the following.

All of your model code inherits from AppModel. Update AppModel with the following property.

class AppModel extends Model
{
var $useCache = 'true' ;
}

Then in your test model override the attribute with a value of false.

class UserTest extends User
{
var $name = 'UserTest';
var $useTable = 'users' ;
var $useDbConfig = 'test';
var $useCache = 'false' ;
}

In between those two snippets is your User model. User inherits from AppModel but has no need to manage caching. When you write a method on your model you will need to add one more chunk of code.

$result = parent::query
(
'SELECT
users.id
FROM
users
WHERE
users.name = \'' . $name . '\'
AND
users.suspended = 0',
$this->useCache
) ;

Note that $this->useCache is used as the second parameter. This then gives you the ability to ensure caching is turned off while your test your model.

A free tip to anyone writing source code anywhere for any reason. If you make a dependency on another object and then silently fallback to reduced functionality when that object is not supplied, write it down. Don’t stop there, formally document in comic sans so that everyone notices the glaring type and takes note. If you really feel like helping people who licence your codebase, document the dependency in the dependant object. The following text is often sufficient:

Feature X on this object is not available unless Object Y exists and is correctly configured.

Note: For all those that ask, this is how I like to spend my Friday nights.

My suggestion is to make your own copy of the document and then delete pages once you have finished with them. It gives you an accurate way of visualising your progress as well as helping to ensure you don’t miss anything.

Note: I’m sure my university lecturers would have done the same when I co-authored a 710 page design document. Actually, based on the scathing comments that were written on it I’m sure they wished they asked for it electronically rather than printed, one-up, single sided. Take that mother nature!

2nd Note: Co-authored is a strong term, we did use a script to generate large swathes of the document.

What is the time to spec on that?

The turnaround time on a change request during the development and testing phases of the software development life cycle. Also an indication that your business analysis processes are taking too long.

If your organisation doesn’t share calendars, open up outlook and create a new meeting request. Go to the scheduling tab and add the person you want to call. You can’t see the specifics of their meetings but you can see when they are busy. When they are busy, do not call them. Chances are they are having a team meeting with the thirty other people in the room. Just like they do every Monday and have done for the past eighteen months.

Once you have determined whether you can call, close the meeting request.

Furthermore, try and obey the three ring rule. If I don’t answer in three rings, I am not going to answer. Don’t let it ring out. Send an email.

When you click on it, the user is taken to the specified file and line and the message will be displayed in the status bar. This is how it works when you let Visual Studio perform builds for you.

So now that you know how to format user messages in the output window, you need to be able to run your script to that output is sent to the output window.

This is pretty easy to do… in Visual Studio, go to: Tools > External Tools and setup you’re tool a bit like mine. My example is a perl script that looks for //TODO comments in code and writes the information to the standard output.

The “Use Output Window” is the kicker here. Otherwise it’ll run in a separate console window and be less useful to you. When you write your scripts, you should dump the output to the standard output. That is what gets piped into the output window.

With this in mind you can start writing scripts to useful feedback to developer like:

• not consting parameters
• identifying classes / methods without unit tests
• poor coding standards / formatting
• implementing FxCop like functionality (for non C# languages)

Basically anything you can identify in a script. I use it for enforcing coding standards, allowing other developers to mark areas for me that could be performance tuned.

It is also useful for doing ASCII to Unicode conversions. Conversions like so are non-trivial and carte-blanche find and replace methods generally don’t work. You can write a script to identify potential areas for change and then tackle them one at a time.

Happy Scripting!

note: I don’t know how to get it to show up in the Error List window (not that I’ve looked recently) but if anyone knows, send me a link. That would be super.