BDD Style Naming Macro for Visual Studio
I've really jumped on board with BDD (Behaviour Driven Development) in the past week. I've been reading about it for awhile, but it wasn't until I started actually doing it on a side project of my own that I've really begun to realise how good it can be. The natural language naming style of the 'specs' (not 'tests' anymore) in different 'contexts' is an excellent way to express through code what your systems does (or should do).
If you have no idea what I'm blabbering on about, you should probably do a google search on 'BDD' or check out the links below:
Writing software BDD style really changes the way you think about how you express what your system does through your tests/specs. Writing specs in different 'Contexts' have enabled me to make my tests more precise and to the point. It is definitely something that I will strive to start using for real projects in the coming few months.
Anyway, so now that you know what BDD is, I can get to the original reason I started this post: a handy BDD naming macro that speeds up your development time by formatting your naturally written sentences into a properly constructed test case shell.
eg. You type:
should be able to load all items
<macro executed via keyboard shortcut> and you get:
[Test]
public void Should_be_able_to_load_all_items()
{
}
Having something like this just makes writing your specs a whole lot simpler.
Now I just want to point out, I didn't come up with the idea for this macro. It was developed originally by Scott Bellware and then evolved by Terry Hughes. This is outlined in a blog article here.
The code for the macro shown on the link above just replaces the spaces with underscores. I've evolved it further to also:
- Append '()' to the end of the line
- Prepend '[Test]' to the line above (because I'm still using NUnit as my testing/spec framework)
- Capitalise the first letter of the spec name
- Provide an empty method body enclosed by '{' and '}'.
Code is below:
Imports System
Imports EnvDTE
Imports EnvDTE80
Imports System.Diagnostics
Public Module CodeEditor
Sub FormatTestCaseBDDStyle()
If DTE.ActiveDocument Is Nothing Then Return
Dim selection As TextSelection = CType(DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection(), EnvDTE.TextSelection)
selection.SelectLine()
If selection.Text.Trim() = "" Then Return
Dim prefix As String = "public void "
Dim index As Integer = selection.Text.IndexOf(prefix)
Dim description As String = selection.Text.Replace(prefix, String.Empty).Trim() + "()"
description = description.Replace(" ", "_").Replace("'", "_")
description = description(0).ToString().ToUpper() + description.Substring(1)
selection.Text = ControlChars.Tab + _
ControlChars.Tab + _
"[Test]" + _
ControlChars.NewLine + _
ControlChars.Tab + _
prefix + description + _
ControlChars.NewLine + _
"{" + _
ControlChars.NewLine + _
ControlChars.Tab + _
"}"
selection.EndOfLine()
selection.LineUp()
End Sub
End Module
So basically when you sit down to write your next spec, you just write the sentence as you would if you were speaking to a human, invoke the macro keyboard shortcut, and it does the rest for you.
For help on getting the macro setup in Visual Studio check out the following links:
Just as a side note, the project I've started using BDD on (and NHibernate too for that matter) is going to be basically a CMS for another website of mine that I'm slowly building up: www.pineappletinfeet.com. I will be releasing the source code of this project in the future so you can see my journey with BDD.
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15 January 2008, 7:30 PM
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Nice, I definitely like. But I made some changes when I added it to my macros.
The two issues I have is that it won't camel case the method name, and actually writing out the method name causes intellisense to freak out. I added some code to fix the first issue (I prefer no _'s and camel casing), changed it for VS unit testing and solved the intellisense issue by allowing the method name to be extracted from a comment, i.e.: // null case test
If DTE.ActiveDocument Is Nothing Then Return
Dim selection As TextSelection = CType(DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection(), EnvDTE.TextSelection)
selection.SelectLine()
If selection.Text.Trim() = "" Then Return
Dim text As String
text = selection.Text.Replace("//", "")
text = text.Trim()
Dim result As New StringBuilder()
result.AppendLine("[TestMethod()]")
result.Append("public void ")
Dim parts As String() = text.Split(New Char() {" "c}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries)
For Each part As String In parts
result.Append(part.Substring(0, 1).ToUpper)
result.Append(part.Substring(1, part.Length - 1))
Next
result.AppendLine("()")
result.AppendLine("{")
result.AppendLine("}")
selection.Text = result.ToString()
DTE.ExecuteCommand("Edit.FormatDocument")
selection.LineUp()
selection.NewLine()
selection.LineUp()
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I had the same issue with IntelliSense trying to take over the world, so I turned the autocomplete of 'Letters and digits' off in my Resharper settings (Resharper had taken over the standard VS intellisense). This allowed me to type natural sentences, and if I need to invoke intellisense I just use Ctrl+Space.
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I've been using it today and determined that I suck. Here's a better version; you 1) write, in comments, one test description per line (one or more lines) 2) select all the lines 3) run the macro. It creates multiple at once, and uses VB's facilities to do upper casing. Using the TextSelection object rather than a stringbuilder makes sure indentation of new lines is correct. Also, adds your original description as a description property
Sub FormatTestCaseBDDStyle()
If DTE.ActiveDocument Is Nothing Then Return
Dim selection As TextSelection = _
CType(DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection(), _
EnvDTE.TextSelection)
If selection.Text.Trim() = "" Then Return
Dim text As String
text = selection.Text.Replace("//", "")
selection.Text = ""
Dim lines = text.Split(Environment.NewLine.ToCharArray(), _
StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries)
Dim result As New StringBuilder()
For Each line As String In lines
line = line.Trim()
selection.Text += "[Description(""" + line + """)]"
selection.NewLine()
selection.Text += "[TestMethod()]"
selection.NewLine()
selection.Text += "public void " + StrConv(line, _
VbStrConv.ProperCase).Replace(" ", "") + "()"
selection.NewLine()
selection.Text += "{"
selection.NewLine()
selection.NewLine()
selection.Text += "}"
selection.NewLine()
Next
selection.LineUp()
selection.LineUp()
End Sub
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That was inspiring,
I'm new to BDD. I folowed your links ,And I liked it so much
Thanks for writing, most people don't bother.
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What is BDD style naming macro for visual studio?
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You really make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find this topic to be really something which I think I would never understand. It seems too complicated and very broad for me. I am looking forward for your next post, I will try to get the hang of it! As a rule I download everything I need (all the books, articles and tutorials) by torrent search engine but I'm really glad to find your site. keep up the good work!
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I like how you implemented it.
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So far, I managed to go though only some of posts you discuss here, but I find them very interesting and informative. Just want say thank you for the information you have shared. Regards
James
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