Working Effectively with Legacy Code

Chapter 10: I Can’t Run This Method in a Test Harness

Getting tests in place to make changes can be a bit of a problem. If you can instantiate your class separately in a test harness, consider yourself lucky. Many people can’t. If you’re having trouble, take a look at Chapter 9, I Can’t Get This Class into a Test Harness.

Instantiating a class is often only the first part of the battle. The second part is writing tests for the methods we need to change. Sometimes we can do this without instantiating the class at all. If the method doesn’t use much instance data, we can use Expose Static Method (345) to get access to the code. If the method is pretty long and difficult to deal with, we can use Break Out Method Object (330) to move the code to ...