How to unit test asynchronous APIs?

Question

I have installed Google Toolbox for Mac into Xcode and followed the instructions to set up unit testing found here.

It all works great, and I can test my synchronous methods on all my objects absolutely fine. However, most of the complex APIs I actually want to test return results asynchronously via calling a method on a delegate - for example a call to a file download and update system will return immediately and then run a -fileDownloadDidComplete: method when the file finishes downloading.

How would I test this as a unit test?

It seems like I'd want to the testDownload function, or at least the test framework to 'wait' for fileDownloadDidComplete: method to run.

EDIT: I've now switched to using the XCode built-in XCTest system and have found that TVRSMonitor on Github provides a dead easy way to use semaphores to wait for async operations to complete.

For example:

- (void)testLogin {
  TRVSMonitor *monitor = [TRVSMonitor monitor];
  __block NSString *theToken;

  [[Server instance] loginWithUsername:@"foo" password:@"bar"
                               success:^(NSString *token) {
                                   theToken = token;
                                   [monitor signal];
                               }

                               failure:^(NSError *error) {
                                   [monitor signal];
                               }];

  [monitor wait];

  XCTAssert(theToken, @"Getting token");
}

Answer 1

I ran into the same question and found a different solution that works for me.

I use the "old school" approach for turning async operations into a sync flow by using a semaphore as follows:

// create the object that will perform an async operation
MyConnection *conn = [MyConnection new];
STAssertNotNil (conn, @"MyConnection init failed");

// create the semaphore and lock it once before we start
// the async operation
NSConditionLock *tl = [NSConditionLock new];
self.theLock = tl;
[tl release];    

// start the async operation
self.testState = 0;
[conn doItAsyncWithDelegate:self];

// now lock the semaphore - which will block this thread until
// [self.theLock unlockWithCondition:1] gets invoked
[self.theLock lockWhenCondition:1];

// make sure the async callback did in fact happen by
// checking whether it modified a variable
STAssertTrue (self.testState != 0, @"delegate did not get called");

// we're done
[self.theLock release]; self.theLock = nil;
[conn release];

Make sure to invoke

[self.theLock unlockWithCondition:1];

In the delegate(s) then.

Answer 2

I appreciate that this question was asked and answered almost a year ago, but I can't help but disagree with the given answers. Testing asynchronous operations, particularly network operations, is a very common requirement, and is important to get right. In the given example, if you depend on actual network responses you lose some of the important value of your tests. Specifically, your tests become dependent on the availability and functional correctness of the server you're communicating with; this dependency makes your tests

• more fragile (what happens if the server goes down?)
• less comprehensive (how do you consistently test a failure response, or network error?)
• significantly slower imagine testing this:

Unit tests should run in fractions of a second. If you have to wait for a multi-second network response each time you run your tests then you're less likely to run them frequently.

Unit testing is largely about encapsulating dependencies; from the point of view of your code under test, two things happen:

1. Your method initiates a network request, probably by instantiating an NSURLConnection.
2. The delegate you specified receives a response via certain method calls.

Your delegate doesn't, or shouldn't, care where the response came from, whether from an actual response from a remote server or from your test code. You can take advantage of this to test asynchronous operations by simply generating the responses yourself. Your tests will run much faster, and you can reliably test success or failure responses.

This isn't to say you shouldn't run tests against the real web service you're working with, but those are integration tests and belong in their own test suite. Failures in that suite may mean the web service has changes, or is simply down. Since they're more fragile, automating them tends to have less value than automating your unit tests.

Regarding how exactly to go about testing asynchronous responses to a network request, you have a couple options. You could simply test the delegate in isolation by calling the methods directly (e.g. [someDelegate connection:connection didReceiveResponse:someResponse]). This will work somewhat, but is slightly wrong. The delegate your object provides may be just one of multiple objects in the delegate chain for a specific NSURLConnection object; if you call your delegate's methods directly you may be missing some key piece of functionality provided by another delegate further up the chain. As a better alternative, you can stub the NSURLConnection object you create and have it send the response messages to its entire delegate chain. There are libraries that will reopen NSURLConnection (amongst other classes) and do this for you. For example: https://github.com/pivotal/PivotalCoreKit/blob/master/SpecHelperLib/Extensions/NSURLConnection%2BSpec.m

Answer 3

St3fan, you are a genius. Thanks a lot!

This is how I did it using your suggestion.

'Downloader' defines a protocol with a method DownloadDidComplete that fires on completion. There's a BOOL member variable 'downloadComplete' that is used to terminate the run loop.

-(void) testDownloader {
 downloadComplete = NO;
 Downloader* downloader = [[Downloader alloc] init] delegate:self];

 // ... irrelevant downloader setup code removed ...

 NSRunLoop *theRL = [NSRunLoop currentRunLoop];

 // Begin a run loop terminated when the downloadComplete it set to true
 while (!downloadComplete && [theRL runMode:NSDefaultRunLoopMode beforeDate:[NSDate distantFuture]]);

}


-(void) DownloaderDidComplete:(Downloader*) downloader withErrors:(int) errors {
    downloadComplete = YES;

    STAssertNotEquals(errors, 0, @"There were errors downloading!");
}

The run-loop could potentially run forever of course.. I'll improve that later!

Answer 4

I wrote a little helper that makes it easy to test asynchronous API. First the helper:

static inline void hxRunInMainLoop(void(^block)(BOOL *done)) {
    __block BOOL done = NO;
    block(&done);
    while (!done) {
        [[NSRunLoop mainRunLoop] runUntilDate:
            [NSDate dateWithTimeIntervalSinceNow:.1]];
    }
}

You can use it like this:

hxRunInMainLoop(^(BOOL *done) {
    [MyAsyncThingWithBlock block:^() {
        /* Your test conditions */
        *done = YES;
    }];
});

It will only continue if done becomes TRUE, so make sure to set it once completed. Of course you could add a timeout to the helper if you like,

Answer 5

This is tricky. I think you will need to setup a runloop in your test and also the ability to specify that runloop to your async code. Otherwise the callbacks won't happen since they are executed on a runloop.

I guess you could just run the runloop for s short duration in a loop. And let the callback set some shared status variable. Or maybe even simply ask the callback to terminate the runloop. That way you you know the test is over. You should be able to check for timeouts by stoppng the loop after a certain time. If that happens then a timeout ocurred.

I've never done this but I will have to soon I think. Please do share your results :-)

Answer 6

If you're using a library such as AFNetworking or ASIHTTPRequest and have your requests managed via a NSOperation (or subclass with those libraries) then it's easy to test them against a test/dev server with an NSOperationQueue:

In test:

// create request operation

NSOperationQueue* queue = [[NSOperationQueue alloc] init];
[queue addOperation:request];
[queue waitUntilAllOperationsAreFinished];

// verify response

This essentially runs a runloop until the operation has completed, allowing all callbacks to occur on background threads as they normally would.

Answer 7

To elaborate on @St3fan's solution, you can try this after initiating the request:

- (BOOL)waitForCompletion:(NSTimeInterval)timeoutSecs
{
    NSDate *timeoutDate = [NSDate dateWithTimeIntervalSinceNow:timeoutSecs];

    do
    {
        [[NSRunLoop currentRunLoop] runMode:NSDefaultRunLoopMode beforeDate:timeoutDate];
        if ([timeoutDate timeIntervalSinceNow] < 0.0)
        {
            break;
        }
    }
    while (!done);

    return done;
}

Another way:

//block the thread in 0.1 second increment, until one of callbacks is received.
    NSRunLoop *theRL = [NSRunLoop currentRunLoop];

    //setup timeout
    float waitIncrement = 0.1f;
    int timeoutCounter  = (int)(30 / waitIncrement); //30 sec timeout
    BOOL controlConditionReached = NO;


    // Begin a run loop terminated when the downloadComplete it set to true
    while (controlConditionReached == NO)
    {

        [theRL runMode:NSDefaultRunLoopMode beforeDate:[NSDate dateWithTimeIntervalSinceNow:waitIncrement]];
        //control condition is set in one of your async operation delegate methods or blocks
        controlConditionReached = self.downloadComplete || self.downloadFailed ;

        //if there's no response - timeout after some time
        if(--timeoutCounter <= 0)
        {
            break;
        }
    }

Answer 8

I find it very convenient to use https://github.com/premosystems/XCAsyncTestCase

It adds three very handy methods to XCTestCase

@interface XCTestCase (AsyncTesting)

- (void)waitForStatus:(XCTAsyncTestCaseStatus)status timeout:(NSTimeInterval)timeout;
- (void)waitForTimeout:(NSTimeInterval)timeout;
- (void)notify:(XCTAsyncTestCaseStatus)status;

@end

that allow very clean tests. An example from the project itself:

- (void)testAsyncWithDelegate
{
    NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://www.google.com"]];
    [NSURLConnection connectionWithRequest:request delegate:self];
    [self waitForStatus:XCTAsyncTestCaseStatusSucceeded timeout:10.0];
}

- (void)connectionDidFinishLoading:(NSURLConnection *)connection
{
    NSLog(@"Request Finished!");
    [self notify:XCTAsyncTestCaseStatusSucceeded];
}

- (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didFailWithError:(NSError *)error
{
    NSLog(@"Request failed with error: %@", error);
    [self notify:XCTAsyncTestCaseStatusFailed];
}

Answer 9

I implemented the solution proposed by Thomas Tempelmann and overall it works fine for me.

However, there is a gotcha. Suppose the unit to be tested contains the following code:

dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
    [self performSelector:selector withObject:nil afterDelay:1.0];
});

The selector may never be called as we told the main thread to lock until the test completes:

[testBase.lock lockWhenCondition:1];

Overall, we could get rid of the NSConditionLock altogether and simply use the GHAsyncTestCase class instead.

This is how I use it in my code:

@interface NumericTestTests : GHAsyncTestCase { }

@end

@implementation NumericTestTests {
    BOOL passed;
}

- (void)setUp
{
    passed = NO;
}

- (void)testMe {

    [self prepare];

    MyTest *test = [MyTest new];
    [test run: ^(NSError *error, double value) {
        passed = YES;
        [self notify:kGHUnitWaitStatusSuccess];
    }];
    [test runTest:fakeTest];

    [self waitForStatus:kGHUnitWaitStatusSuccess timeout:5.0];

    GHAssertTrue(passed, @"Completion handler not called");
}

Much cleaner and doesn't block the main thread.

Answer 10

I just wrote a blog entry about this (in fact I started a blog because I thought this was an interesting topic). I ended up using method swizzling so I can call the completion handler using any arguments I want without waiting, which seemed good for unit testing. Something like this:

- (void)swizzledGeocodeAddressString:(NSString *)addressString completionHandler:(CLGeocodeCompletionHandler)completionHandler
{
    completionHandler(nil, nil); //You can test various arguments for the handler here.
}

- (void)testGeocodeFlagsComplete
{
    //Swizzle the geocodeAddressString with our own method.
    Method originalMethod = class_getInstanceMethod([CLGeocoder class], @selector(geocodeAddressString:completionHandler:));
    Method swizzleMethod = class_getInstanceMethod([self class], @selector(swizzledGeocodeAddressString:completionHandler:));
    method_exchangeImplementations(originalMethod, swizzleMethod);

    MyGeocoder * myGeocoder = [[MyGeocoder alloc] init];
    [myGeocoder geocodeAddress]; //the completion handler is called synchronously in here.

    //Deswizzle the methods!
    method_exchangeImplementations(swizzleMethod, originalMethod);

    STAssertTrue(myGeocoder.geocoded, @"Should flag as geocoded when complete.");//You can test the completion handler code here. 
}

blog entry for anyone that cares.

Answer 11

Looks like Xcode 6 will solve the issue. https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/DeveloperTools/Conceptual/testing_with_xcode/testing_3_writing_test_classes/testing_3_writing_test_classes.html

Answer 12

My answer is that unit testing, conceptually, is not suitable for testing asynch operations. An asynch operation, such as a request to the server and the handling of the response, happens not in one unit but in two units.

To relate the response to the request you must either somehow block execution between the two units, or maintain global data. If you block execution then your program is not executing normally, and if you maintain global data you have added extraneous functionality that may itself contain errors. Either solution violates the whole idea of unit testing and requires you to insert special testing code into your application; and then after your unit testing, you will still have to turn off your testing code and do old-fashioned "manual" testing. The time and effort spent on unit testing is then at least partly wasted.