Courses

Test-Driven ASP.NET

Motivation

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is a powerful tool for combining software design, testing, and coding to increase reliability and productivity. With ASP.NET, however, Microsoft has created a tool that doesn't easily lend itself to test-driven development.

Furthermore, the ease of creating ASP and ASP.NET applications has led to established applications that don't have any tests, making changes difficult and risky. Savvy developers have been looking for ways to apply test-driven development to both new and existing code so they can make changes quickly and safely.

  

A Taste of Test-Driven
ASP.NET

What You will learn in this Test-Driven ASP.NET Course

In this course, we teach you how to use the newly-released NUnitAsp 2.0 to perform test-driven ASP.NET. We show you "best practices" for performing test-driven development of new ASP.NET and then dive into the challenges and solutions of adding tests to existing code. We provide guidance in test-driven development, NUnitAsp, and throw in lots of pithy comments derived from years of experience with architecting web applications.

Your instructors, James Shore and Rob Myers, have years of experience in software development and have constructed this course personally. They go "off script" at the drop of a hat [just try to stop us! -JS] and gladly respond to your questions with their insights and expertise.

Course Length

2 days

Course Level

Beginner

Course Outline

Day 1: TDD with NUnitAsp

What is test-driven development? Why do we care? How does NUnitAsp work? When should we use NUnitAsp, and when should we just use NUnit alone? Take a deep breath as we immerse you in learning and experimenting with TDD using NUnitAsp. We show you the best ways to create a new application using TDD.

Day 2: Simplifying Tests with Test-Beds

What about complicated applications? What about our existing applications that don't have tests? We show you how to use test-beds to surgically target your tests. We teach you the nitty-gritty of NUnitAsp architecture and show you how to leverage its strengths to isolate pages and user controls from the dependencies of login and navigation.

Day 3: Mocks and Dealing with Untestables

What is "untestable?" What can be done with tough external dependencies? Learn how to use mock objects in concert with test-beds to isolate ASP.NET code-behind from the rest of your application.

Who is this course for

Software developers (engineers, programmers, whatever you wish to call yourselves) working with ASP or ASP.NET projects. Managers and QA folks are always quite welcome, too, but must meet the prerequisites.

Equipment

A laptop or desktop computer with Visual Studio .NET and Internet Information Server (IIS) installed. Please, no beta .NET frameworks.

Prerequisites

  • A strong grasp of one of the .NET languages, such as C#.NET or VisualBasic.NET. Please note that samples, exercises, and demos are all done using C#.
  • An understanding of basic web-application architecture.
  • Some experience with ASP or ASP.NET web-application frameworks (or an innate ability to experiment and explore with a reckless fearlessness).
  • All three days mix lecture, demonstrations, activities, and hands-on lab assignments. Students are required to provide their own computer (see "Equipment").
  • Ample sleep, or the caffeinated beverage of your choice.