Unit-testing code that relies on untestable 3rd party code

Posted by DudeOnRock on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by DudeOnRock
Published on 2013-11-06T02:31:55Z Indexed on 2013/11/06 4:16 UTC
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Sometimes, especially when working with third party code, I write unit-test specific code in my production code. This happens when third party code uses singletons, relies on constants, accesses the file-system/a resource I don't want to access in a test situation, or overuses inheritance. The form my unit-test specific code takes is usually the following:

if (accessing or importing a certain resource fails)
    I assume this is a test case and load a mock object

Is this poor form, and if it is, what is normally done when writing tests for code that uses untestable third party code?

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Unit-testing code that relies on untestable 3rd party code - Developer IT

Unit-testing code that relies on untestable 3rd party code

unit-testing

Related posts about unit-testing

Unit testing best practices for a unit testing newbie

About unit testing a function in the zend framework and unit testing in general

Unit testing a database connection and general questions on database-dependent code and unit testing

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Unit testing newbie team needs to unit test

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