Naming standards for unit tests

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Test name should express a specific requirement
Your unit test name should express a specific requirement. This requirement should be somehow derived from either a business requirement or a technical requirement. In any case, that requirement has been broken down into small enough pieces, each of which represents a test case. If your test is not representing a requirement, why are you writing it? Why is that code even there?

Also, developers who are  on a role are happy to give meaningless or numbered names to their test just so they can continue on with what they are doing.  This leads down a narrow slope where quickly no one has the time  or energy to fix the names of the tests. Also, most developers don t bother too much with writing good assert messages in their tests. A good assert message (which shows up if the test fails) is jey to understanding what went wrong. Assuming writing good assert messages is one of the key places where most unit test developers fall short, the only thing left to save us then is the name of the test. If both the name of the test and the error messages in it are not expressive enough, the poor maintenance developer (often the same one who developed the tests) is left to wonder  what was this joker thinking? looking at a year old code base with unit tests.

Test name should include the expected input or state and the expected result for that input or state
To express the specific requirement clearly you should think about two things you need to express: the input values/current state during which the test takes place, and the expected result from that state.

Example:
Given this method:

Public int Sum(params int[] values)

You have a requirement that numbers larger than 1000 that are passed in should not be considered for calculation (that is  a number bigger than 1000 is equal to zero).

What about this name:  Sum_NumberBiggerThan1000

That is only half way there. As a reader of the test I can only assume that some input in your test is bigger than 1000, but I do not understand what the requirement being tested is.

How about this name:  Sum_NumberIsIgnored

Still not good enough. While it does tell me the expected result, it does not tell me under which circumstances it needs to be ignored. I would have to go into the test code and read through it to find out  what the expected input is.

How about this name:  Sum_NumberIgnoredIfBiggerThan1000

That s much better. I can tell just by looking at the test name what It means if the test fails. I don t need to look at the code,  and I can tell exactly what requirement this test tries to solve.

Test name should be presented as a statement or fact of life that expresses workflows and outputs

Unit tests are just as much about documentation as they are about testing functionality. You should always assume that someone else is going to read your tests in a year, and that they should not have a hard time understanding your intent.

Test names which are written as short declarative statements are much more expressive that names which are  machine readable that is  they only make sense if you have an understanding of a hidden code language to dissect their meaning.

People might first complain that the name of the test method appears way too long for them, but in the end it s more about readability. Longer test names do not imply longer or less optimized code, and even if they did, we are not looking to optimize test code performance. If anything, test code should always be optimized for readability.  

Here s an example of a bad an d good test name

Public void SumNegativeNumber2()

And here s a better way to express your intent

Public void Sum_ExceptionThrownOnNegativeNumberAs2ndParam ()

Test Name should only begin with  Test if it is required by the testing framework or if it eases development and maintenance of the unit tests  in some way.

Since most tests today reside in a specific class or module that is logically defined as a test container (fixture), there are only a handful of reasons why you would want to prefix you test methods with the word  Test :

-         Your unit testing framework requires this

-         You have coding standards in place and they include this

-         You want to make it easier to navigate to the methods using Intellisense or some other search mechanism.

Test name should include name of tested method or class

You usually have at least a number of tests for each method you are testing, and you are usually testing a number of methods in one test fixture (since you usually have a test fixture per class tested). This leads to the requirement that your test should also reflect the name of the method begin tested, not only the requirements from it.

For example:

Public void Sum_ExceptionThrownOnNegativeNumberAs1stParam ()

Public void Sum_ExceptionThrownOnNegativeNumberAs2ndParam ()

Public void Sum_CalculatedForsimpleValues ()

&

Public void Parse_ExceptionThrownOnEmptyString ()

Public void Parse_SingleTokenReturnsEqualToeknValue ()

&

Variable names should express the expected input and state

It s easy to name variables going into a method with generic names, but with unit tests you have to be twice as careful to name them as what they represent, i.e.  BAD_DATA or  EMPTY_ARRAY or  NON_INITIALIZED_PERSON

You do not need to name them with a CONST casing , but the name does have to represent the intent of the test author.

A good way to check if your names are good enough is to look at the ASSERT at the end of the test method. If the  ASSERT line is expressing what your requirement is, or comes close, you re probably there.

For example:

Assert.AreEqual(-1, val)

Vs.

Assert.AreEqual(BAD_INITIALIZATION_CODE, ReturnCode, Method shold have returned a bad initialization code )