Testing with JUnit

Understanding the nature of a unit test

A unit test is basically a piece of code written by a developer to verify that another piece code—usually the implementation of a feature—works correctly. In this context, a unit identifies a very small, specific area of behavior and not the implementing code itself. If we regard adding an item to our timeline as a functional feature for example, appropriate tests would ensure that the item list grows by one and that the new item gets inserted at the right chronological position.

Yet, there is more to it than meets the eye. Unit tests are restricted to that code for which the developer is responsible. Consider using a third-party library that relies on external resources. Tests would implicitly run against ...