JUnit Pocket Guide [Paperback]

Kent Beck (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2004

JUnit, created by Kent Beck and Erich Gamma, is an open source framework for test-driven development in any Java-based code. JUnit automates unit testing and reduces the effort required to frequently test code while developing it.

While there are lots of bits of documentation all over the place, there isn't a go-to-manual that serves as a quick reference for JUnit. This Pocket Guide meets the need, bringing together all the bits of hard to remember information, syntax, and rules for working with JUnit, as well as delivering the insight and sage advice that can only come from a technology's creator.

Any programmer who has written, or is writing, Java Code will find this book valuable. Specifically it will appeal to programmers and developers of any level that use JUnit to do their unit testing in test-driven development under agile methodologies such as Extreme Programming (XP) [another Beck creation].

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kent Beck is the founder and director of Three Rivers Institute (TRI). He has pioneered patterns for software development, the XUnit family of test frameworks, the HotDraw drawing editor framework, CRC cards, refactoring, and most recently eXtreme Programming (XP). He is the author of Extreme Programming Explained, Planning Extreme Programming, and The Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns. He lives on 20 acres in rural southern Oregon with his wife, five children, four dogs, two sheep, and a variable number of domestic fowl.

Product Details

• Paperback: 120 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1st edition (September 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596007434
• ISBN-13: 978-0596007430
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #348,227 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #25 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Computers & Internet > Programming
  • #60 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Computers & Internet > General

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Basic introduction to JUnit, February 15, 2008

By 

Doug Bell "Java guru" (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: JUnit Pocket Guide (Paperback)

I got "JUnit Pocket Guide" along with "JUnit in Action" and "JUnit Recipes". I figured I should have Beck's book since he's the father of JUnit and a major force in test-driven development. I figured I'd get a concise explanation of JUint and be able to use the book as a reference.

While the book more or less meets those goals, the writing is terse and mostly fails to provide the illuminating insights I was hoping for. I was also disappointed that the book is not well-structured to use as a reference, and is somewhat out of date with JUnit 4.x at this point. After reading this I moved on to "JUnit in Action", which I highly recommend.

Overall, I'm not disappointed that I got the book given the reasonable price and minimal investment in time reading it. It does serve as a quick introduction to and motivation for using JUnit. However, if you intend to put JUnit into practice, you can easily skip this book and go directly to one of the many excellent and more comprehensive books on JUnit--this book won't be enough and offers nothing indispensable.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Barebones introduction to JUnit, November 6, 2004

By 

Jack D. Herrington "engineer and author" (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: JUnit Pocket Guide (Paperback)

This is a short and sweet end-to-end introduction to JUnit. The text is pretty terse and there are a surprising number of a screenshots for a book so small. The book starts with an introduction to testing. It then gives a high level architectural overview of JUnit, along with it's API. There is a short digression into the history of the framework. Then it's into putting a front-end on the tests both on the command line and embedded into IDEs.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All you need..., October 28, 2004

By 

Eric Wuehler (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: JUnit Pocket Guide (Paperback)

Quick disclosure - I'm a big fan of JUnit already. :) Anything that will convince java developers to use JUnit is a good thing. JUnit is as powerful as it is simple. To prove it, everything you need to know about JUnit is in this 80 page pocket guide. If you are a Java programmer, this pocket guide will easily convince you to add JUnit to your daily development processes. It covers the entire JUnit API, using JUnit with Ant, Extending JUnit, and plenty of suggestions on how to test various situations with JUnit.

I liked the descriptions on how to run JUnit standalone or within various IDEs (Eclipse, JBuilder and IntelliJ IDEA). I have been working with JUnit in Eclipse for quite some time and recently started a project using IntelliJ IDEA - so it helped me get JUnit going quickly. I also found the short history on JUnit interesting as well.

Whether you're new to Java development or just haven't used JUnit yet, this is the perfect pocket guide to help you get started.