Unit Testing what will never happen?

Some developers refuse or are slow to test units for certain values or situations because, they claim, those values or situations will not occur.

Some reasons given are that the presentation tier or UI will prevent certain values; that other modules in the call chain already have error handling and validation. So why test something that won’t happen?

Let’s take an example. In the method/function below, the type will never be blank or null. Looking at the actual source code for the application will show this. So should a unit test be written that will invoke this method with a null, “”, or ” “?

public boolean service(final String type){
    // do stuff
    return result;
}

Yes!
1. Things change.
2. Bad stuff happens.
3. Development process will use invalid values.
4. More complete testing. Regression testing, path coverage, etc.
5. The method could now be used in a different call chain.
6. Its a public method, anything can invoke it, even a business partner via some remoting technology.
7. When invoked as part of other unit tests, it could have invalid values.

#3 is, I think, the most important. Did you ever do development and something not work and it turn out to be existing code that did not handle arguments correctly? That is wasted time and an aggravation. Sure, in the current production code, a blank string won’t be used, but during development, especially TDD, you scaffold code. Sometimes you don’t have values yet, so you just use a blank string.

Just the other day I tested a deployed production method that correctly tested the argument for an empty string, “”, and did the right thing. However, the code did not check for a blank string, ” “, and throws an exception. Unit testing would have shown this.

And, yes, this will never happen in our application.

Ok, you still don’t want to test something for null or invalid values? At least put this in writing in the Javadoc: “I (insert your name and address) am a great developer and stake my professional career that this method will never be invoked with invalid values.” The address is needed so us mediocre developers can hunt you down when the server crashes.

Further Reading

1. Testing getter/setter using JUnit
2. FindBugs and JSR-305