Frankenstein: Testing Multithreaded Applications

Testing Multithreaded Applications

Frankenstein makes it easy to test multithreaded applications. In a multithreaded Swing application, worker threads are usually spawned as a result of a user action. At the end of every test step, Frankenstein waits until all worker thread activity ceases.

A Thread naming convention based approach

Using a thread naming convention based approach requires minimal code changes, and should work well for most cases.

The basic approach is as follows:

Choose a Worker Thread naming convention. (For example, you could choose a naming convention that names all worker threads with a prefix and a counter: UIWorker-1, UIWorker-2, etc.)
Create a regular expression that matches the naming convention
Create a RegexWorkerThreadMonitor with the regular expression, and supply it to a FrankensteinIntegration instance


import com.thoughtworks.frankenstein.application.FrankensteinIntegration;
import com.thoughtworks.frankenstein.application.RegexWorkerThreadMonitor;

/**
 * Launches the application under test via Frankenstein.
 */
public class FrankensteinLauncher {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
     FrankensteinIntegration integration = new FrankensteinIntegration(YouMainClass.class, new RegexWorkerThreadMonitor("UIWorker"));
     integration.start(args);
   }
}

An alternate approach: implement the WorkerThreadMonitor interface

Another approach is to implement the WorkerThreadMonitor interface.


    package com.thoughtworks.frankenstein.application;
    
    /**
     * Monitor worker thread activity.
     */
    public interface WorkerThreadMonitor {
        /**

         * Called at the start of a test run.
         */
        public void start();
    
        /**
         * Blocking call, that returns after worker thread activity ceases.
         */
        public void waitForIdle();

    }