Monday, May 08, 2006

NG-UIPAB V3 Alpha 3... UnitTesting!

Hi!
This releases has several minor bug fixes, the majority of them because I have upgraded the UnitTests for UIPAB 2.0 and that allowed me to test all the changes the UIP has suffered in my hands. This will make it easier to add new features without the fear of finding I broke something important.

The majority of the bugs fixed were related to the difference between the HybridDictionary and the new generic Dictionary<K,V> with an HybridDictionary it as right to ask for an unknown key:

if(hybridDictionaryInstance["SomeUnknownKey"]==null) {

//The SomeUnknonwKey is not in the HybridDictionary

}

But in .NET 2.0, that code throws a "Key not found" exception and I have to:

if(!genericDictionaryInstance.ContainsKey("SomeUnknownKey")) {

//The SomeUnknownKey is not in the Generic Dictionary

}

The other problem was WindowsFormViewManager.GetCurrentViews(taskId) I am sure that my choice for return type was the correct one (IDictionary<string, IList<WindowsFormView>>) but it seems to be consistent with my interpretation of the internal workings of the UIPAB

So, in the test, where it said:

Hashtable views = WindowsFormViewManager.GetCurrentViews(taskId);

Now says:

IDictionary<string, IList<WindowsFormView>> views;
views = WindowsFormViewManager.GetCurrentViews(taskId);

And, where it said:

views["name"];

it now says:

view["name"][0]

But I am not that convinced about the usability of this structure... perhaps I should simplify it in the next release. (The previous code IMO seems to handle this in an inconsistent way... some code assumes that the view is a dictionary strings and WindowsFormViews, and other code assumes that the key is a string, but the value is an IList... I guess i need to analyze this more thoughtfully



1 comment:

Frederik Gheysels said...

You can also use the TryGetValue method; it returns true if the dictionary contains the key, and false if it doesn't. It also has an out parameter that contains the value, if the dictionary contains the key.
In this way, you do not have to check if the key is in the dictionary, and afterwards get the value from the dictionary; you can do it in one go.

Requirements Analysis: Negative Space

A while ago, I was part of a team working on a crucial project. We were confident, relying heavily on our detailed plans and clear-cut requi...