interface – Clean C++

Interfaces are one of the backbones of modern, object-oriented design. You need to use instances of different classes which share similarities in a uniform way? Use interfaces. You cannot easily test a class because it depends on details of other classes? Make your class depend on interfaces instead and introduce mock objects. You have a class with a single responsibility, but a respectable amount of methods which are intended for different types of callers? Make your class implement several interfaces, and let different callers refer to the ones which suit their needs.

As you can see, interfaces used correctly are pretty powerful tools, and many programming languages such as Java and C# provide dedicated interface keywords. This is not the case for C++. This article explains how to write clean and safe interfaces for your classes.

Continue reading “Interfaces done right”

Unit tests follow a simple pattern. First, you create a controlled environment for the function or class you want to test. Afterwards, you call a function or method of an object or create a new instance. Finally, you assert that the function returns the expected value or the state of your object has changed as desired. Sometimes, though, tests seem to grow unnaturally large because it is ridiculously difficult to control the environment.

Quite often the issue is that the code you would like to test is too specialized to be easily testable. In this article we will learn about how interfaces and mock objects can be used to enhance the testability of your code and make it easier to reuse.

Continue reading “Mock objects”