What is unit testing
Unit tests are methods that run in order to verify the output of a method is what is expected when given a predefined input. This is useful as you can check if your code does what it should. There is a whole world of information on this on the internet. Check out test driven development.

History
There used to be a few different unit testing frameworks – flexunit, fluint and asunit. asunit was the fastest to run but has not been too popular. I am not sure why. Fluint was a flex-centric testing framework with stuff like ui impersonator (mocking). Flexunit was the most used.

Current
Flexunit was taken on (again) by Adobe and merged with fluint. After adobe took it on again they named it version 4, probably to bring versioning inline with Flash Builder and flex. with this change they improved the API to introduce metadata for methods so that they are run before, after and as test methods. It is now distributed with hamcrest (same as the java hamcrest library) and a number of runners and listeners. It is the most used and it is the one i would recommend.

How it works
You write the unit test in any of the supported styles (flexunit 1, flexunit 4 or fluent or maybe even in another style) and you mark them to run with the associated runner (using metadata). You then run the tests using that test runner. Whilst the test runs a listener is also run. There are multiple test listeners, they are for different environments – to be run on a ci box, in the browser, in the IDE etc.

Continuous Integration
You cannot currently run unit tests without a flash player. You cannot currently run a flash player without a virtual frame buffer (think that is the term) or without a window manager running. With hudson (or jenkins now) you can install and run the vnc plugin, this has been the easiest way I have found so far. This takes care of all that stuff for you. It even deals with multiple vnc sessions at the same time if you have more than one hudson executor at a time.

Coverage and static analysis
You can get coverage from running flexcover and there is a flex pmd library released by adobe – there is the usual pmd offering and a cpd plugin.

How to run it all
you can run it all using maven (using the flexmojo stuff) or you can roll out your own ant stuff. Rolling out your own ant stuff is the way to go if you have a complicated dependencies system (like at my last job), otherwise if you just want to get the job done maven is probably the way to go.

I will attach a working example project tomorrow.

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I am working on a secret project at work and I thought it would be good to share what I have learned. I want to point out that I had no 3d experience before I started this! So you should be able to do this too!

I have been using papervision to render a texture map. It takes a black and white jpeg which marks shallower and higher areas on a terrain. Papervision converts this into a 3d terrain, mountains and ditches. I also have a car which is loaded from a dae file. Papervision loads this file and renders it. I am then using Jiglibflash to create JBoxes, JSpheres and others. These ‘J’ shapes are used for the collision detection. You can even have a Papervision sphere inside a JBox and the physics engine will treat it as a box. It does all the collision detections for you. It takes care of friction and gravity. You can apply forces to the shapes. It is really straight forward handling simple shapes. The next stage of my project is to start describing complex shapes using these J shapes. It is going to be tough!!!

Using these libraries has been great! It has been a bit of a pain as Jiglibflash uses Papervision (you can also choose to use Away3D) and you need to ensure you use working sets of Jiglibflash and Papervision. A lot of the examples use strange combinations of versions so beware!

I will post the other stuff I discover as I discover it!

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Here are the details

I think it went really well. I had some very kind feedback via email and twitter and also on the night in person!

A few people have requested that I upload the examples I used and the slides so here they are.

Over the next few weeks I am going to be posting example patterns with more information, in more depth than I did on the night.

If you want me to cover a pattern please post a comment with the pattern name and I will bump it up in the list.

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