Should I add features in a class just to make it testable? - unit-testing

Question

I am still trying to get the hang of unit testing, I have a simple question. Today I wanted to write a test for a very simple function. This function was doing just this:
void OnSomething()
{
increment++;
if (increment == 20)
SaveIt();
}
I said, this function could be testable. I could write a test that calls it 20 times and then verifies that SaveIt has been called.
Then my doubt arose. How can I test that SaveIt has been called? My first answer was to add a boolean, but then I thought: is it correct to add class features just to make it testable?
Please advise. Thank you.

Answer 1

I would suggest having SaveIt return a success or failure result, this just makes it easier to test overall. You could do something as simple as having it return a bool, or you could create a generic result class that contains the ability to set messages as well, if you ever need to report whether it passed or failed.
A simple example example
public class Result
{
public bool IsSuccess;
public List<string> Messages;
}
In the unit test you're trying to test only the OnSomething behavior though -- what happens inside "SaveIt" should not be tested. So ideally you'd want SaveIt() to occur in another class so you can mock its response.
I use Moq for this purpose. Moq is free, you can get it here: http://code.google.com/p/moq/
my method would then become
Result OnSomething()
{
Result result=null;
increment++;
if(increment == 20)
{
result = saver.SaveIt();
}
return result;
}
Your class constructor would take an object that implements ISaver interface (defining SaveIt() method) (ideally injected by a DI framework but you could generate it manually if you had to).
Now in your unit test you would create a mock version of ISaver and tell it what to return when it gets called:
Mock<ISaver> mock = new Mock<ISaver>();
mock.Setup(x=> x.SaveIt()).Returns(new Result{IsSuccess=true});
You'd instantiate your class passing mock.Object in the constructor ISaver parameter.
ex.
MyClass myClass = new MyClass(mock.Object);
//(assuming it didn't have other parameters)
Then, you could Assert whether result is null or not -- if it never got called, it would be null because the setup you did above would never trigger.
(in nunit)
Result result = myClass.OnSomething();
Assert.IsNotNull(result);
If you really didn't want OnSomething() to return a result, or it couldn't because it's an event, then I would have OnSomething() call a method to do the work for you:
void OnSomething()
{
Result result = DoTheWork();
}
Result DoTheWork()
{
Result result=null;
increment++;
if(increment == 20)
{
result = saver.SaveIt();
}
return result;
}
And then run your unit test on DoTheWork() instead of OnSomething().

Answer 2

Definitely not! Production code should not depend on tests at all, but the tests should verify the correct behaviour of the actual code. This can be achieved by several methods, such as IOC, and using mocks. You can take a look at some existing frameworks which simplify your life a lot:
http://code.google.com/p/mockito/
http://code.google.com/p/jmockit/
http://www.easymock.org/