How to perform multiple identical unit tests.

Apologies if my question has a relativity simple solution which I have failed to see, but I'm really quite new to the MATLAB unit test framework.

Basically I have a list of over 100 MATLAB scripts that I need to perform the same unit test on. Is there an easy way to do this without having to write out each test individually?

I should also point out that it's important I'm able to see which .m file each test refers to.

Thanks

Answer 1

[David Hruska]

Hi Graham,

One approach is to define your test content in an abstract base class. The test content would refer to an abstract property or method in the base class that is implemented by each subclass. You would need 100+ subclasses (one for each of the scripts that you want to test). Andy Campbell gives a concrete example of this approach here. This approach has the obvious disadvantage of requiring the definition of over 100 test classes; however, they would likely be quite simple. One benefit is that you can easily run the unit test for just one script file by itself.

Alternatively, you could consider writing Test methods that operate on all the scripts using a for loop. In order to provide defect localization in the event of a test failure, you could construct a diagnostic that identifies the script being tested. Here's a rough outline of an example:

classdef exampleTest < matlab.unittest.TestCase
    methods (Test)
        function test1(testCase)
            % Test 100 scripts
            for i = 1:100
                % Operate on script i
                testCase.verifyThat(result_of_script_i, <constraint>, ...
                    sprintf('Testing script %d', i));
            end
        end
    end
end

With this approach, you lose the ability to easily run the test for just one of the scripts by itself, but the test is fairly easy to write.

Hope this helps,

David

Answer 2

[David Hruska]

Release 2014a provides another solution that you may want to consider -- writing a parameterized test. Please see this answer for more details.