Unit Testing Principles, Practices, and Patterns

Chapter 3. The anatomy of a unit test

This chapter covers

• The structure of a unit test
• Unit test naming best practices
• Working with parameterized tests
• Working with fluent assertions

In this remaining chapter of part 1, I’ll give you a refresher on some basic topics. I’ll go over the structure of a typical unit test, which is usually represented by the arrange, act, and assert (AAA) pattern. I’ll also show the unit testing framework of my choice—xUnit—and explain why I’m using it and not one of its competitors.

Along the way, we’ll talk about naming unit tests. There are quite a few competing pieces of advice on this topic, and unfortunately, most of them don’t do a good enough job improving your unit tests. In this chapter, I describe those ...