How to test asynchronuous code - c++

Question

I've written my own access layer to a game engine. There is a GameLoop which gets called every frame which lets me process my own code. I'm able to do specific things and to check if these things happened. In a very basic way it could look like this:
void cycle()
{
//set a specific value
Engine::setText("Hello World");
//read the value
std::string text = Engine::getText();
}
I want to test if my Engine-layer is working by writing automated tests. I have some experience in using the Boost Unittest Framework for simple comparison tests like this.
The problem is, that some things I want the engine to do are just processed after the call to cycle(). So calling Engine::getText() directly after Engine::setText(...) would return an empty string. If I would wait until the next call of cycle() the right value would be returned.
I now am wondering how I should write my tests if it is not possible to process them in the same cycle. Are there any best practices? Is it possible to use the "traditional testing" approach given by Boost Unittest Framework in such an environment? Are there perhaps other frameworks aimed at such a specialised case?
I'm using C++ for everything here, but I could imagine that there are answers unrelated to the programming language.
UPDATE:
It is not possible to access the Engine outside of cycle()

Answer 1

In your example above, std::string text = Engine::getText(); is the code you want to remember from one cycle but execute in the next. You can save it for later execution. For example - using C++11 you could use a lambda to wrap the test into a simple function specified inline.

Answer 2

There are two options with you:
If the library that you have can be used synchronously or using c++11 futures like facility (which can indicate the readyness of the result) then in your test case you can do something as below
void testcycle()
{
//set a specific value
Engine::setText("Hello World");
while (!Engine::isResultReady());
//read the value
assert(Engine::getText() == "WHATEVERVALUEYOUEXPECT");
}
If you dont have the above the best you can do have a timeout (this is not a good option though because you may have spurious failures):
void testcycle()
{
//set a specific value
Engine::setText("Hello World");
while (Engine::getText() != "WHATEVERVALUEYOUEXPECT") {
wait(1 millisec);
if (total_wait_time > 1 sec) // you can put whatever max time
assert(0);
}
}