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Unit Testing with HSQLDB

The latest release (2.0.0) of Yank - the Ultra-Light JDBC Persistance Layer for Java, finally contains unit-tested code. This blog is about how HSQLDB was used for performing in-memory unit tests using JUnit. Just like most things, once you know the few tricks, it's really easy.

Once nice feature of HSQLDB is that you can set up 100% in-memory tables, which makes unit testing a snap because you don't need to worry about having a database setup on the machine running the database. The following code snippets show how easy it was to setup a unit test for testing the core JDBC persistance layer code in Yank. While this is specific to Yank, this example should help you unit test any of your JDBC code using HSQLDB. After all, the main trick is to have your database properties setup correctly, as shown in HSQL_DB.properties below.

TestBooksTable.java

package com.xeiam.yank.unit;

import static org.hamcrest.CoreMatchers.equalTo;
import static org.hamcrest.MatcherAssert.assertThat;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Properties;

import org.junit.AfterClass;
import org.junit.BeforeClass;
import org.junit.Test;

import com.xeiam.yank.DBConnectionManager;
import com.xeiam.yank.PropertiesUtils;
import com.xeiam.yank.demo.Book;
import com.xeiam.yank.demo.BooksDAO;

/**
 * @author timmolter
 */
public class TestBooksTable {

  @BeforeClass
  public static void setUpDB() {

    Properties dbProps = PropertiesUtils.getPropertiesFromClasspath("HSQL_DB.properties");
    Properties sqlProps = PropertiesUtils.getPropertiesFromClasspath("HSQL_SQL.properties");

    DBConnectionManager.INSTANCE.init(dbProps, sqlProps);
  }

  @AfterClass
  public static void tearDownDB() {

    DBConnectionManager.INSTANCE.release();
  }

  @Test
  public void testBooksTable() {

    BooksDAO.createBooksTable();

    Book book = new Book();
    book.setTitle("Cryptonomicon");
    book.setAuthor("Neal Stephenson");
    book.setPrice(23.99);
    int i = BooksDAO.insertBook(book);
    assertThat(i, equalTo(1));

    List<Book> books = new ArrayList<Book>();

    book = new Book();
    book.setTitle("Cryptonomicon");
    book.setAuthor("Neal Stephenson");
    book.setPrice(23.99);
    books.add(book);

    book = new Book();
    book.setTitle("Harry Potter");
    book.setAuthor("Joanne K. Rowling");
    book.setPrice(11.99);
    books.add(book);

    book = new Book();
    book.setTitle("Don Quijote");
    book.setAuthor("Cervantes");
    book.setPrice(21.99);
    books.add(book);

    int[] returnValue = BooksDAO.insertBatch(books);
    assertThat(returnValue.length, equalTo(3));

    List<Book> allBooks = BooksDAO.selectAllBooks();
    assertThat(allBooks.size(), equalTo(4));

    book = BooksDAO.selectBook("Cryptonomicon");
    assertThat(book.getPrice(), equalTo(23.99));

  }
}

HSQL_DB.properties

driverclassname=org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver

# 100% in memory DB
myconnectionpoolname.url=jdbc:hsqldb:mem:aname;shutdown=true
myconnectionpoolname.user=sa
myconnectionpoolname.password=
myconnectionpoolname.maxconn=10

HSQL_SQL.properties

BOOKS_CREATE_TABLE=CREATE TABLE Books (TITLE VARCHAR(42) NULL, AUTHOR VARCHAR(42) NULL, PRICE DECIMAL(10,2) NOT NULL)
BOOKS_SELECT_BY_TITLE=SELECT * FROM BOOKS WHERE TITLE = ?

Ultra-Light JDBC Persistance Layer

Yank is a very easy-to-use yet flexible Java persistence layer for JDBC-compatible databases build on top of org.apache.DBUtils. Yank wraps DBUtils, hiding the nitty-gritty Connection and ResultSet details behind a straight-forward proxy class: DBProxy. "Query" methods execute SELECT statements and return a List of POJOs. "Execute" methods execute INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE (and more) statements.

Usage is very simple: define DB connectivity properties, create a DAO and POJO class, and execute queries.

Features

• Depends on light-weight and robust DBUtils library
• ~13KB Jar
• Apache 2.0 license
• Batch execute
• Automatic POJO and POJO List querying
• Works with any JDBC-compliant database
• Write your own SQL statements
• Optionally store SQL statements in a Properties file
• Built-in Connection pool

What's Next?

Now go ahead and study some examples, download the thing and provide feedback.

Piece of Cake!!!

XChange Release 1.3.0

Our Financial Exchange Library for Java, XChange, has seen a lot of active development since the previous release in October 2012. We went from 2 to 7 exchange implementations thanks mostly to the growing community starting to support the project more.

Here's a list of the supported exchanges. More detailed info can be found here, which includes planned future exchange implementations.

• MtGox - polling and streaming market data, authenticated trading
• Bitstamp - polling market data, authenticated trading
• BTC-E - polling market data, authenticated trading
• VirtEx - polling market data
• CampBX - polling market data
• BitcoinCharts - polling market data (Bitcoin Exchange Rates)
• OpenExchangeRates - polling market data (Fiat Currency Exchange Rates)

Internally, we introduced a new and improved REST interface that sits between our xchange classes and the HttpTemplate class responsible for fetching JSON. It also gives XChange clients access to the raw unmarshalled JSON data if they want it, which was something XChange needed for a long time.

All exchange implementations have full-coverage unit tests.

We've been able to reduce the number of dependencies a lot. One of the main focuses of XChange is to be very lightweight. Most notably is the outdated org.json jar. We dug into the Socket.io code, and painstakingly swapped out the old code with our already-used Jackson JSON code. This is good news for apps like Bitcoinium and Multibit, which both use XChange, for keeping their executable footprint small.

Another major accomplishment with this release, is that the artifacts are now hosted on Maven Central: XChange artifacts on Maven Central

We're thinking about adding an arbitrage API within XChange next as the MtGox, BTC-E, and Bitstamp implementations all contain trading functionality.

Relevant Links

Detailed Exchange Support
Bug Reports and Feature Requests
XChange Home on xeiam.com
XChange artifacts on Maven Central
XChange project on Github

Very Realistic Robot Face