I have a class that I am unit testing into with dUnit It has a number of methods some public Methods & Private Methods
type
TAuth = class(TDataModule)
private
procedure PrivateMethod;
public
procedure PublicMethod;
end;
In order to write a unit test for this class I have to make all the methods public.
Is there a differt way to declare the PrivateMethods so that I can still unit test them but they are not Public ?
You don't need to make them public. Protected will do. Then you can subtype the class for unit testing and surface the protected methods. Example:
type
TAuth = class(TDataModule)
protected
procedure MethodIWantToUnitTest;
public
procedure PublicMethod;
end;
Now you can subtype it for your unit test:
interface
uses
TestFramework, Classes, AuthDM;
type
// Test methods for class TAuthDM
TestAuthDM = class(TTestCase)
// stuff
end;
TAuthDMTester = class(TAuthDM)
public
procedure MethodIWantToUnitTestMadePublic;
end;
implementation
procedure TAuthDMTester.MethodIWantToUnitTestMadePublic;
begin
MethodIWantToUnitTest;
end;
However, if the methods you want to unit test are doing things so intimately with the data module that it is not safe to have them anything but private, then you should really consider refactoring the methods in order to segregate the code which needs to be unit tested and the code which accesses the innards of the data module.
I recommend the "XUnit Test Patterns" book by Gerard Meszaros:
Question: How can we make code testable when we need to access private state of the SUT?
Answer: Add methods that expose the state or behavior needed by the test to a subclass of the SUT.
... If the system under test (SUT) was not designed specifically to be testable, we may find that the test cannot get access to state that it must initialize or verify at some point in the test.
The article also explains when to use it and which risks it carries.
Put the DUnit code within your unit. You can then access anything you like.