Currently I am in process of writing large batches of Unit-Tests in the Project
ID: 639451 • Letter: C
Question
Currently I am in process of writing large batches of Unit-Tests in the Project I am working on. Additionally we recently Introduced GUI-Testing. This project is a relatively simple webapp, on basis of Java EE 6.
Now my colleage did write quite some GuiTests, and I did write quite some Unit-Tests.
For both tests we need data to run them. Now we both took different approaches on how we "store" the data we use.
Solution 1:
public class UnitTestData {
public static final String DATA_PIECE = "some data";
public static final String MORE_DATA = "and more data";
//... and so on
}
Solution 2:
public class GuiTestData {
public String getDataPiece() {
return "some data";
}
public String getMoreData() {
return "and more data";
}
//... and so on.
}
My question now is: Which of these approaches is the objectively better one?
Explanation / Answer
There are two arguments for using accessor methods instead of public variables:
Access Control: A method allows us to publish only a getter method, or to add value-based (in contrast to type-based) constraints on a setter. With public final identifiers, this point is irrelevant, as that value can't be changed, and invariants therefore can't be broken by client code.
Uniform Access: The method of accessing data in an object should not leak information on whether this data is stored or computed on the fly. In languages without