Isolate your ASP.NET – Race for Free Licenses

Eli Lopian    .NET Tests, Release    

Our team is launching a new product for ASP.NET developers who develop with integrity – the ASP.NET Bundle.

For the launch you can win FREE licenses if you are fast enough.

See our official blog with the detail on getting free licenses.

Good luck… 

Why do we ignore your arguments?

Eli Lopian    Product, Release    

With the release of Isolator Version 5.3, we have added the ability to simulate external components based on the arguments passed to those components. We called this Conditional Behavior.

Our default is to ignore arguments, to fake a method without taking the arguments into consideration, neither the number of arguments (overloads) or the values of those arguments (conditional behavior).

There is a reason for this.
Lets see the values with which we create our API’s, taken from Roy’s post

• Consistency
• Discoverability
• Explicitness
• Single point of entry
• Readability
• Single way to achieve things
• Backwards compatibility

The value that I want to discuss is Explicitness: we decided early on to be as explicit as possible about the API, so that the least guessing needs to take place by the user

So how do we decide on our defaults?
We fight about them, we find out what will need the least guessing, but keep the tests short (Readable)?

We talk about what most users mean, what most users expect.
We talk about failing fast when writing the code and we talk about Brittle vs Fragile when running the code.
We argue about what default usage will break if the user changes (refactors) the production code, without changing its logic. We want those tests to succeed.

This is ultimately why we ignore the arguments, so that changing a value passed to a method or using an overloaded method instead, will not fail the test.
Those cases where the difference is required, are discoverable while writing the test. The test will fail fast, if an overloaded method needs a different behavior, or if the method acts differently based on its arguments, and that will allow the writer to add the conditional behavior.

Isolator for SharePoint – Free License

Eli Lopian    .NET Tests, Product, Release, SharePoint    

Get a free Typemock Isolator license:

[Update: Contest is finished, Thanks to all you bloggers]

We’re announcing today about a new product: Isolator for SharePoint. It is almost the same as Typemock Isolator, but will only work on APIs that are directly connected with sharepoint’s API. That means that if you only need to test sharepoint stuff, you can get a powerful product, for a much cheaper price than the full Isolator (you can always upgrade later if you need to isolate more APIs).

With this release, we want to gather the power of crowds, by offering you an incentive for blogging about this news: Get A free Typemock Isolator license (the full one) just because you have a blog. Here’s the official word:

Are you a blogger, webmaster, or Internet columnist? Get a Free Typemock Isolator License (Personal Edition) by helping us launch our new product, Isolator For SharePoint, the only tool that can unit test SharePoint applications without a SharePoint server – see the Microsoft Guidance.

Go ahead, post about it now and your Free License will be on its way!

So how do I get the Free License?

Just make a post on your blog or site about the latest Typemock product, that includes the following text:

Typemock are offering their new product for unit testing SharePoint called Isolator for SharePoint, for a special introduction price. it is the only tool that allows you to unit test SharePoint without a SharePoint server. To learn more click here.

The first 50 bloggers who blog this text in their blog and tell us about it, will get a Full Isolator license, Free. for rules and info click here.

Then please send an email to sharepoint@typemock.com including your name and the post URL, and your Free License will be on its way!

Hurry up – this offer is limited to the first 50 bloggers.

A few simple requirements:

(1) You must own a website, blog space or internet column, older than 2 months, or get permission from the owner of such a site.
(2) Your post must include the text above (including the links).

Releasing Isolator 5.0 and Racer alpha

Eli Lopian    Product, Release    

We have been working very hard this summer and we are just ready for 2 major releases.

Isolator 5.0

Based on customer feedback we are going to change our pricing model and add 3 new packages

• Special Bundle, containing:
  • Typemock-Isolator
  • Annual Update Subscription
  • Ivonna for ASP.NET testing
  • TestDriven.NET for seamless Visual Studio testing
• Personnel License, for single developers will cost only $199
• Open Source License, for Open Source projects will be free

We have also added a new API for better structured isolation (Mock, Stub, Fake…).

Highlights are:

• No need to understand the difference between Mock, Stub, Fake, Double they all use the same API.
• Easier to automate isolation by recursively faking all chained (sub) calls so:
  

  ClassToIsolate faked =
    Isolate.Fake.Instance<ClassToIsolate>(Member.ReturnFakesRecursivly);
  // now all sub calls will be faked, so this will not fail
  faked.GetSomething().Parent.GetDetail().DoSomething();
  
  // can setup return values via
  Isolate.WhenCalled( ()=> faked.GetSomething().Parent.GetDetail().Name)
     .WillReturn("Cool");
  
  

• Better structure of interaction validation. No recording stage and validation done at the end of the test (aka, AAA- Arrange,Act,Assert)

  // A. arrange
  ClassToIsolate faked =
    Isolate.Fake.Instance<ClassToIsolate>(Member.ReturnFakesRecursivly); 
  
  // A. act
  ClassUnderTest.MethodUnderTest(faked);
  
  // A. assert
  Isolate.VerifyWasCalledWithAnyargument(
  ()=> faked.GetSomething().Parent.GetDetail().DoSomething());
  
  

Racer Alpha

Our newest product helps solve a huge problem for multi-thread/multi-core software development, by automatically finding and pinpointing deadlocks. To use the racer simply call a multi-threaded code via the API and the Racer will start running and re-running the code in different permutations to find the deadlocks. Once a deadlock is found, you can debug the code straight to the problematic permutation!

The Racer uses both Dynamic code analysis and Static code analysis to perform its magic.

See a preview of Typemock Racer on Roy’s Blog

See an example on how to find the deadlock of the Dining philosophers problem.

Of course both the tool play well together and you can validate multi-threaded code in an isolated component.

Is the visibility of tested methods important?

Eli Lopian    Product, Release    

We are having quite a discussion lately about the importance of the visibility of tested methods.

See our internal Blog for the juicy stuff

Typemock Isolator 4.2.4 is available

Eli Lopian    Product, Release    

Typemock Isolator 4.2.4 is available for download.
This is a patch release with many bug fixes.

• “Invalid Operation Exception” when working with NHybernate and XML serialization was fixed.
• Complex LINQ queries are now mocked correctly.
• Manual assembly loading does not cause an exception. AssemblyResolve event fires correctly.
• RepeatAlways now works correctly following WhenArgumentsMatch.
• Returning values of types that inherit from generic type now work correctly.
• GetMocks return the correct mocks for abstract classes and interfaces.
• Following undeploy Typemock Isolator remains registered.
• Methods up to 30 parameters can now be mocked.

Get the juicy development information here

ASP.NET Unit Testing just got Easier

Eli Lopian    Product, Release    

There is a lot of talk about unit testing ASP.NET. Artem Smirnov  has managed to build a new tool for writing unit tests for ASP.NET. The tool called Ivonna is available as a beta release.

Ivonna is built on top of the Typemock Isolator framework and facilitates running unit tests in the same process as any other unit test, on the client machine, as well as having a specialized API

To start using, see the Getting Started page on the cool site that Artem built. Artem is kind enough to add a forum for feedback – Please use it.

I am sure that there are other packages that can be built for other component to help simplify unit testing, feel free to contact us and we will help you develop these packages

Typemock and .NET 1.1

Eli Lopian    Product, Release    

Although we still have many developers using Typemock in .NET 1.1, now that .NET 3.5 is out, we are going to drop the support for .NET 1.1. in our next version.

Version 4.2 will be the last version to support .NET 1.1. This will allow us to support better .NET 2.0+ features and support better type-safe programming.

Any objections?

Typemock Isolator 4.2 is released

Eli Lopian    Release    

We have released version 4.2 of Typemock Isolator, now with more features that enable shorter development cycles, higher quality of production code, better tested and more stable software components.

Typemock Isolator V4.2 introduces support of the new .NET 3.5 framework as well as Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2008. Version 4.2 has an improved IDE integration based on using colors to emphasize mocked methods making the best visualization, easiness and comfort for developers to verify their code developments.

On top, Typemock Isolator V4.2 provides full support of synergetic solutions such as Finalbuilder™ and DotTracer™ profiler, making this new release the most powerful testing framework for .NET developments ever.

“We are always seeking ways to help you simplify the development process, and our improved interface and integration with the market leading tools ensures organizations and developers with easiness, better software quality and a true saving of development expenditure”.

Webcast of new features

Mark your calendar for the live special webcast of Typemock  Isolator on Wednesday, March 12^th at 4PM GMT (8AM PST). To join the webcast and for further details please click here.

Typemock Isolator – Beta – Better Community

Eli Lopian    Product, Release    

The Typemock team has released our next version of TypeMock.NET.

We are calling it Typemock-Isolator. As Typemock helps developers Isolate their code from the rest of the system and make it Testable.

The main reason behind this are our plans to create more tools that will help simplify writing unit tests.

The Brain-Storming sessions behind this name where fun and we actually decided on a name, coded it in and then changed the name a few times after that (talk about agile teams). But the team took these changes really well!

Roy and Paulo have already talked about some new features.
Mainly Better Debugger Integration and Mocking Fields!!!

We have decided to add more features to our Community Edition and some features that were in the Professional Edition and can now be used in the Community Edition

1. Mocking using Generic Code Sugar

Mock mockControl = MockManager.Mock<ClassToMock>();

 

2. Integrated Visual Studio Help can now be downloaded by all Typemock-Isolator users
3. Per your request*: The annoying feedback screen while in evaluation, has been removed.

* The majority of feedbacks we received was to remove the Feedback Screen