How do I set a variable in flow scope in a unit test?

[nkaza]

Well, I'd say there's definitely room for improvement on this matter. What's the use of such a construct if you can't have it in you test...

Allow me to disagree on that. A var declared inside the flow is part of the flow being unit tested. So it doesn't make sense to replace it with something else. That would be analogous to unit testing a piece of code and wanting to replace its local variables during testing. Local variables are part of the code being tested. Unit testing is only supposed to provide different implementations of the flow's dependencies, not its internal variables.

[theseion]

I want to answer that later, not enough time right now. Just on a quick notice, I did find a solution to my original question in this thread: http://forum.springsource.org/showth...on-render+test

To set a flowScope variable, e.g. to test a specific state without going through all the other states, do the following:

setCurrentState("stateName"); //this configures the execution environment
getFlowScope().put("varName", someObject); //set the variable

One of my problems while playing around had been that I getFlowScope() would return null. The trick is to call setCurrentState() before that.

I'll be back later to answer you last post.

theseion

[theseion]

So, finally I found time to answer your last post.

I've thought about what you wrote and I agree. Still I find the current situation pretty annoying since every change to the flow not only requires a change to the tests but also an updated copy of the flow without the <var> declarations.

I don't really have an understanding of the internals of Webflow but maybe something like a test switch parameter to the <var> tag could be a solution. E.g.:

<var name="myClass" class="com.package.MyClass" mock="true" />

I'm not only sugesting this because I find it annoying to have a modified copy of the flow for the test but also because I found this setup do be error-prone: if I modify the flow, run the test but forgot to replace the test copy of the flow I will maybe discover any errors made later, once I do replace the test copy. But tracking a bug down at this point will be much more difficult since I was probably expecting problems in completely different area.

Sorry for keeping you waiting so long.

Cheers.

-theseion