Unit Testing Destructive Methods

When doing unit tests on models, and database-altering methods/functions, what is the best methodology or mindset for unit testing? For instance, a "publish" function in a model has no test-able behaviors except for pass/fail, and in the case of passing, it modifies the database. Best practice or approach?

Current thoughts would be to create a mirror of the current database before testing, and just开发者_如何学Python change the database selection in my unit test file. Thank you for your suggestions.

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If you want to do unit test (=test in isolation):

• the business logic would execute against a fake database (Repository mock)
• the test checks if business logic has really called repository-delete method.

If you want an integration test with the business logic and the database you can

• open a database transaction
• add data to database via sql
• execute the business logic that destroys the data just added
• verify that data is not in database any more (via sql)
• rollback the database transaction.

Update:

If you are using .NET you should have a look at ndbunit for java dbunit

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Use xtunit if you are on .net. This will wrap your test in a transaction and roll it back when it's done.

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Don't mirror the database... stub it. If you are testing against a database, You are not unittesting.