Student: ex11
More on Exceptions, static methods, tdd
Part of a series of tutorial articles about a Student class.
Code examples referred to on this page can be found here: https://github.com/ucsb-cs156/student-tutorial/tree/ex11.
Overview
In this example we show how to write a static method to compute the Luhn Checksum and how to test it.
To illustrate the Test-Driven Development approach (tdd) we start by first writing some tests. To set up our tests, we start by doing the Lund calculation by hand on a few six digit perms. This does two things:
- It gives us some data for our tests
- It gives us practice in applying the algorithm; this will help us understand how to write the code.
Take 123456. Applying the Luhn algorithm, we get:
1 + 2x2 + 3 + 4x2 + 5 + 6x2 =
1 + 4 + 3 + 8 + 5 + (1+2) = 24
To get to a number divisble by 10, we need to add 6, so the check digit is 6: 1234566
(Another algorithm that gets to the same result: (sumOfDigits * 9 ) % 10. For example, 24*9 = 216, 216%10 = 6)
For another example, consider: 111111
1 + 1x2 + 1 + 1x2 + 1 + 1x2 =
1 + 2 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 2 = 9
To get to a number divisible by 10, we need to add 1, so the check digit is 1: 1111111.
(Using the formula (sumOfDigits * 9 ) % 10 again: 9*9 = 81, 81%10 = 1)
To check our work, we can use this online Luhn calculator.
With this in mind, we now have at least two test cases for computing check digits over six digit numbers.
So, we can write some test cases for a utility method that we’ll put into its own class called Luhn.java.
- We’ll write a stub for it first
- Then we’ll write some tests
- Finally we’ll write an implementation
- Then we’ll check the mutations testing.
Here’s what a stub for the Luhn.java class would look like. The idea is that we the static member function checkDigit will take a number as it’s argument that lacks a check digit, and it will compute the check digit that needs to be placed at the end. We return -1 as the stub value, since that should fail every test.
package edu.ucsb.cs156.student;
public class Luhn {
public static int checkDigit(int num) {
return -1; // stub
}
}
Note: We could also have used any number other than the values 0 through 9 since those are values that could sometimes be a correct return value for the function; ideally, a stub value will always fail the tests.
Now we also write some tests:
package edu.ucsb.cs156.student;
import static org.junit.Assert.assertEquals;
import org.junit.Test;
public class LuhnTest {
@Test
public void test_luhn_111111() {
assertEquals(1, Luhn.checkDigit(111111));
}
@Test
public void test_luhn_123456() {
assertEquals(6, Luhn.checkDigit(123456));
}
@Test
public void test_luhn_182734() {
assertEquals(4, Luhn.checkDigit(182734));
}
}
We observe that these tests fail on the stub, then we replace the stub with what we beleive to be a correct implementation:
public static int checkDigit(int num) {
int currentPlace = 0;
int sumOfDigits = 0;
while (num > 0) {
currentPlace += 1;
int leastSigDigit = num % 10;
int thisValue = leastSigDigit;
if (currentPlace % 2 == 1) {
thisValue = leastSigDigit * 2;
}
if (thisValue <= 9)
sumOfDigits += thisValue;
else
sumOfDigits += 1 + (thisValue % 10);
num = num / 10;
}
return ( sumOfDigits * 9 ) % 10;
}
The tests pass. We then refactor our Student class with a static member function to test whether a perm number is valid.
This static member function incorporates all of the logic about valid perm numbers into one place.
Here’s the constructor before our refactor:
public Student(String name, int perm) {
if (perm < 1 || perm > 9999999) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException("Unacceptable value for perm: " + perm);
}
this.name = name;
this.perm = perm;
}
And here’s the constructor after:
public Student(String name, int perm) {
if (!validPerm(perm)) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException("Unacceptable value for perm: " + perm);
}
this.name = name;
this.perm = perm;
}
Here’s a first implementation of validPerm that only takes the existing check into consideration. Ordinarily we might apply DeMorgan’s law to this and convert it into a one liner, i.e. return perm >= 1 && perm <= 9999999;, however in this case, since we are going to be adding more logic, keeping it in this form makes sense for now.
public static boolean validPerm(int perm) {
if (perm < 1 || perm > 9999999) {
return false;
}
return true;
}
We now add test cases for validPerm to our StudentTest class, as shown in the examples below. We use assertTrue(actual) rather than assertEquals(true, actual), and assertFalse(actual) rather than assertEquals(false,actual); this is a matter of style for JUnit tests. Two additional imports are required to define these methods.
import static org.junit.Assert.assertTrue;
import static org.junit.Assert.assertFalse;
...
@Test
public void test_validPerm_1111111() {
assertTrue(Student.validPerm(1111111));
}
@Test
public void test_validPerm_neg1_false() {
assertFalse(Student.validPerm(-1));
}
We can now add additional logic to the validPerm method, incorporating a call to the checkDigit method of our Luhn class:
public static boolean validPerm(int perm) {
if (perm < 1 || perm > 9999999) {
return false;
}
if (perm <= 999999)
return true;
int lastDigit = perm % 10;
int firstSix = perm / 10;
return lastDigit == Luhn.checkDigit(firstSix);
}
Some refactoring now has to result, because, for example, the perm of 9999999 in our default constructor is now an invalid perm; the checkdigit for 999999 is actually 6. Similarly, some of the other perms we had in our test cases are no longer legal, so we have to make some adjustments.
Eventually, however, we get to a point where all of the test cases are passing, and we can check the test coverage.
As we see from the report archived at the link below, we now have some gaps in our test coverage. In ex12, we will discuss how to address those.