Perl Testing: A Developer's Notebook (Developers Notebook) (Paperback)

~ (Author), chromatic (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Is there any sexier topic in software development than software testing? That is, besides game programming, 3D graphics, audio, high-performance clustering, cool websites, et cetera? Okay, so software testing is low on the list. And that's unfortunate, because good software testing can increase your productivity, improve your designs, raise your quality, ease your maintenance burdens, and help to satisfy your customers, coworkers, and managers.

Perl has a strong history of automated tests. A very early release of Perl 1.0 included a comprehensive test suite, and it's only improved from there. Learning how Perl's test tools work and how to put them together to solve all sorts of previously intractable problems can make you a better programmer in general. Besides, it's easy to use the Perl tools described to handle all sorts of testing problems that you may encounter, even in other languages.

Like all titles in O'Reilly's Developer's Notebook series, this "all lab, no lecture" book skips the boring prose and focuses instead on a series of exercises that speak to you instead of at you.

"Perl Testing: A Developer's Notebook" will help you dive right in and:

Write basic Perl tests with ease and interpret the results

Apply special techniques and modules to improve your tests

Bundle test suites along with projects

Test databases and their data

Test websites and web projects

Use the "Test Anything Protocol" which tests projects written in languages other than Perl

With today's increased workloads and short development cycles, unit tests are more vital to building robust, high-quality software than ever before. Once mastered, these lessons will helpyou ensure low-level code correctness, reduce software development cycle time, and ease maintenance burdens.

You don't have to be a die-hard free and open source software developer who lives, breathes, and dreams Perl to use this book. You just have to want to do your job a little bit better.

About the Author

Ian Langworth has been using Perl since 1997, and actively involved in the Perl community since 2003. In 2004 he contributed Apache-TinyCP and several Kwiki modules to CPAN, and spoke at Perl-related conferences such as YAPC, Usenix, and LISA.

Chromatic lives in the Pacific Northwest and is a freelance writer and programmer. He is a frequent contributor to Slashdot and to Slash itself and wrote the Everything Bible for the Everything Development Company.

Product Details

• Paperback: 180 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; illustrated edition edition (July 14, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596100922
• ISBN-13: 978-0596100926
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #243,515 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally a Practical Guide to Perl Testing, September 10, 2005

By	Michael Schilli (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

You'll read this book cover-to-cover. It's easy,
it's concise, it's fun and it will change your
testing attitude. You'll be inspired immediately,
roll up your sleeves and get started.

Sure, Ian Langworth and chromatic could have
written a 700-page reference tome on all the
different testing modules available and how to use
every single feature. Instead, they just show you
what expert perl programmers do when they're
testing their work.

They're getting you 90% there. If you need more,
it's easy to pick up the details from the manual
pages of the various testing modules, most of
which come with excellent documentation. The
value of this book is that it shows you what's
available and covers an astonishing amount of
different use cases.

O'Reilly's "Developer's Notebook" style is
somewhat unusual, very FAQ-like. The only gripe I
have with this series are recurring headlines like
"How do I do that?" and "What just happened?",
which I'd rather like to be replaced by
pictograms.

Summary: I strongly recommend this book if you
want to improve the quality of your code by
verifying it thoroughly. Using the recipes in
"Perl Testing" takes the unsexyness out of
Quality Assurance.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars no nonsense introduction to the imporant stuff, August 5, 2007

By	Ricardo Signes "rjbs" (Bethlehem, PA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I was initially not excited by O'Reilly's "Developer's Notebook" line of books. A lot of things conspired to make me turn up my nose. The design looked too gimmicky, the first few books turned me off (I don't remember specifics, but it was something like Excel Macros, Java Networking, and some other crap), and something inside me just felt like it was a dumb idea. I don't know why: I used to use similar references all the time, back when the Linux HOWTOs weren't useless. Anyway, when I heard that the new Perl testing book was going to be a notebook, I sort of groaned, but I still made sure I got it as soon as it was out and dug in.

Testing is Really Important. It serves as a secondary form of documentation, it makes it easier to add new features, it makes it easier to fix broken features, and it makes your replacement's job a lot easier when you win the lottery and retire early. It's a sad fact that plenty of people don't test their code, and that many of those who want to just don't know how. PTDN is a crash course for those people. It gets right to the point: page one says, roughly, "You know you should be testing, so here's how you do it. First, run the CPAN shell and install Test::Simple."

The rest of the book sticks to that no-crap attitude. "You want to do X. Here's what you do, and here's what happens when you do it." There isn't much of "why should I do this" or "how does this work on the inside" and that's just right. The book isn't there to show you how Devel::Cover works, or to explain the ideas behind agile development. It's there to help you do the job you know you need to do. It's like an old-style HOWTO extracted back one level of abstraction, or a set of nice fat articles on a series of related topics.

In fact, I think it's safe to say that a more traditional technical book on this subject might have been just the sort of overblown self-important thing that would've kept more people scared of and away from testing. Instead, it's a great crash course for the uninitiated.

For the initiated, I'm not sure how useful it would be. I must say that I didn't find many new or esoteric things in PTDN, but I don't think I'm its target audience. I already use and love coverage reports, I aim for full coverage on my code, and I like keeping my eye on the Test:: namespace for neat new tricks. If I were to hire a lackey, though, who wasn't already familiar with testing, this book would be high up on his must-read list. Knowing how to test your software is vitally important, and this book provides a very short path to that knowledge.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book, September 12, 2006

By	Eric J. Wu (cambridge, ma USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Love this book, excellent intro to Perl testing. One of the few (or only) books on Perl testing out there. Not sure what the people who gave it a low rating would've recommended instead - there are some web docs out there but they are all by chromatic too.


Contents include the following:

Test::More, Dest::Deep, test_ok, cmp_deeply, is, Devel::Cover, Test::Harness, Mock modules, program testing, testing databases and Apache, and much more.

Fairly easy to follow. If you program seriously in Perl, but need to learn more about testing, this is the book to have.