Should assertions print what WAS called?

Question

Should assertions print what WAS called?

jasongoodwin opened this issue 7 years ago · comments

From a usability perspective, I find myself modifying code to printing the expected invocation because what was invoked during the test is not printed to the console.
I feel like any unexpected invocation of the mock should print, or possibly just when verifying assertions.

Daniel Olshansky · Answer 1 · Wed Nov 22 2017 12:04:55 GMT+0800 (China Standard Time)

I feel like there can be a lot of cases where a function is mocked to limit the scope of some unit test, without the need to know how the mocked function was called.

I understand your feature request, but it is a very specific use case which is not universally true, so I don't believe it is a feature that should be part of the library.

Let me know what you think

Jason Goodwin · Answer 2 · Wed Nov 22 2017 12:42:31 GMT+0800 (China Standard Time)

An assertion will show the expectation and the actual value. Would it not make sense to say 'expected x but got y' or 'expected x but was not called?' I can see your point but for expediency I would think that more info would be strictly better. One of the reasons I'm using ExUnit for example is for the assertion information. You can say a test failrd but to say why and how is much more helpful when troubleshooting regressions for instance. What changed? How is it failing now? I can't imagine that information would ever be unhelpful. On Nov 21, 2017 11:04 PM, "Daniel Olshansky" <notifications@github.com> wrote: I feel like there can be a lot of cases where a function is mocked to limit the scope of some unit test, without the need to know how the mocked function was called. I understand your feature request, but it is a very specific use case which is not universally true, so I don't believe it is a feature that should be part of the library. Let me know what you think — You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#78 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ACtqLL9Xad-Nfe2n8jsUrEPq3Cyzqgkhks5s451ngaJpZM4Qmh9g> .

Daniel Olshansky · Answer 3 · Thu Nov 23 2017 09:31:08 GMT+0800 (China Standard Time)

Okay, that makes sense to me.

I probably won't have time to tend to this sometime in the near future, but you're welcome to make a PR for this feature :)

Mat Trudel · Answer 4 · Sat Jun 30 2018 03:51:54 GMT+0800 (China Standard Time)

+1 to @jasongoodwin's request. Not being able to see what was called is very annoying in many use cases, for example when chasing down failing tests as the result of a change in call structure.