Approach to Mocks

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As of January 2021, support for mocks has not been implemented in Cobol Check.

We want to take a slightly different approach than was taken in the proof of concept project, cobol-unit-test. In that project, a mock represented behavior, such as reading a file or calling a subprogram. In Cobol Check, a mock represents (or will represent) an external resource - a file, a subprogram, etc. - and the user can specify one or more behaviors for that resource. We expect this approach to be easier for users and less error-prone than the previous approach.

Here are some examples of how users might code Mocks in Cobol Check (subject to change as development continues).

Mocking a batch input file and specifying behaviors for particular I/O operations:

    TestCase "It handles file-not-found"
        mock Taxpayer-Update-File
          on open file-status is file-not-found 
        end-mock
        perform 1100-open-files 
        expect w-error-code to be "TUFNOTFND" 

    TestCase "It handles missing postal code" 
        mock Taxpayer-Update-File 
          on read 
              move "testID123" to tp-in-taxpayer-id 
              move "55 main st." to tp-in-taxpayer-addr1 
              move "bakersfield, ca" to tp-in-taxpayer-addr2 
              move spaces to tp-in-taxpayer-postcode 
        end-mock 
        perform 1500-validate-in-rec 
        expect ws-error-code to be "TUFNOPOST"