Basic Structure

The interface design and naming is inspired by the Boost Test Library. Following this naming scheme, the unit testing package consists of three basic structural elements:

The basic building blocks of this unit testing framework are assertions. Assertions are used for checking if a condition is true. See Assertion Types for a clarification of the difference between the three assertion types. Assertions are grouped into single test cases and test cases are organized in test suites.

A test suite is a group of test cases that live in a single procedure file. You can group multiple test suites in a named test environment by using the optional parameter name of RunTest().

For a list of all objects see Index or use the Search Page.

Test Run

A Test Run is executed using RunTest() with only a single mandatory parameter which is the Test Suite.

Function definition of RunTest

variable RunTest(string procWinList, string name = defaultValue, string testCase = defaultValue, variable enableJU = defaultValue, variable enableTAP = defaultValue, variable enableRegExp = defaultValue, variable allowDebug = defaultValue, variable keepDataFolder = defaultValue)

Main function to execute test suites with the unit testing framework.

usage example
RunTest("proc0;proc1", name="myTest")

This command will run the test suites proc0 and proc1 in a test named myTest.

Return
total number of errors
Parameters
  • procWinList: A list of procedure files that should be treated as test suites.

    The list should be given semicolon (“;”) separated.

    The procedure name must not include Independent Module specifications.

    This parameter can be given as a regular expression with enableRegExp set to 1.

  • name: (optional) default “Unnamed”

    descriptive name for the executed test suites. This can be used to group multiple test suites into a single test run.

  • testCase: (optional) default “.*” (all test cases in the list of test suites)

    function names, resembling test cases, which should be executed in the given list of test suites (procWinList).

    The list should be given semicolon (“;”) separated.

    This parameter can be treated as a regular expression with enableRegExp set to 1.

  • enableJU: (optional) default disabled, enabled when set to 1:

    A JUNIT compatible XML file is written at the end of the Test Run. It allows the combination of this framework with continuous integration servers like Atlassian Bamboo/GitLab/etc. Can not be combined with enableTAP.

  • enableTAP: (optional) default disabled, enabled when set to 1:

    A TAP compatible file is written at the end of the test run.

    Test Anything Protocol (TAP) standard 13

    Can not be combined with enableJU.
  • enableRegExp: (optional) default disabled, enabled when set to 1:

    The input for test suites (procWinList) and test cases (testCase) is treated as a regular expression.

    Example
    RunTest("example[1-3]-plain\\.ipf", enableRegExp=1)

    This command will run all test cases in the following test suites:

  • allowDebug: (optional) default disabled, enabled when set to 1:

    The Igor debugger will be left in its current state when running the tests.

  • keepDataFolder: (optional) default disabled, enabled when set to 1:

    The temporary data folder wherein each test case is executed is not removed at the end of the test case. This allows to review the produced data.

Test Suite

A Test Suite is a group of Test Cases which should belong together. All test functions are defined in a single procedure file. Generally speaking, a Test Suite is equal to a procedure file. Therefore tests suites can not be nested, although multiple test suites can be run with one command by supplying a list to the parameter procWinList in RunTest().

Note

Although possible, a test suite should not live inside the main program. It should be separated from the rest of the project into its own procedure file. This also allows to load only the necessary parts of your program into the unit test.

Test Case

A Test Case is one of the basic building blocks grouping assertions together. A function is considered a test case if it fulfills all of the following properties:

  1. It takes no parameters.
  2. It returns a numeric value (Igor Pro default).
  3. Its name does not end with _IGNORE or _REENTRY.
  4. It is either non-static, or static and part of a regular module.

The first rule is making the test case callable in automated test environments.

The second rule is reserving the _IGNORE namespace to allow advanced users to add their own helper functions. It is advised to define all test cases as static functions and to create one regular distinctive module per procedure file. This will keep the Test Cases in their own namespace and thus not interfere with user-defined functions in ProcGlobal.

A defined list of test cases in a test suite can be run using the optional parameter testCase of RunTest(). When executing multiple test suites and a test case is found in more than one test suite, it is executed in every matching test suite.

Example:

In Test Suite TestSuite_1.ipf the Test Cases static Duplicate() and static Unique_1() are defined. In Test Suite TestSuite_2.ipf the Test Cases static Duplicate(), static Unique_2() are defined.

Runtest("TestSuite_1.ipf;TestSuite_2.ipf", testCase="Unique_1;Unique_2;Duplicate")

The command will run the two test suites TestSuite_1.ipf and TestSuite_2.ipf separately. Within every test suites two test cases are execute: the Unique* test case and the Duplicate test case. The Duplicate test cases do not interfere with each other since they are static to the corresponding procedure files. Since the duplicate test cases are found in both test suites, they are also executed in both.

Note

The Test Run will not execute if the one of the specified test cases can not be found in the given list of test suites. This is also applies if no test case could be found using a regular expression pattern.

Assertion Types

An assertion checks that a given condition is true or in more general terms that an entity fulfills specific properties. Test assertions are defined for strings, variables and waves and have ALL_CAPS names. The assertion group is specified with a prefix to the assertion name using one of WARN, CHECK or REQUIRE. Assertions usually come in these triplets which differ only in how they react on a failed assertion. The following table clarifies the difference between the three assertion prefix groups:

Type Create Log Message Increment Error Count Abort execution immediately
WARN YES NO NO
CHECK YES YES NO
REQUIRE YES YES YES

The most simple assertion is CHECK() which tests if its argument is true. If you do not want to increase the error count, you could use the corresponding WARN() function and if you want to Abort the execution of the current test case if the supplied argument is false, you can use the REQUIRE() variant for this.

Similar to these simple assertions there are many different checks for typical use cases. Comparing two variables, for example, can be done with WARN_EQUAL_VAR(), or REQUIRE_EQUAL_VAR(). Take a look at Example10 for a test case with various assertions.

Note

See Assertions for a complete list of all available checks. If in doubt use the CHECK variant.

Assertions with only one variant are PASS() and FAIL(). If you want to know more about how to use these two special assertions, take a look at Example7.