In tutorials on GWT Google uses to different approaches to do MVP, either the View specifies the Presenter or the Presenter specifies the View. The first one is used when using Activities and Places.
This post touches on this subject: MVP: Should the View implement a Presenter's interface or vice versa?
However I would like to know which alternative you think is best when it comes to unit testing of the presenter and the view? Or will both work equally well?
The idea behind unit testing of presenter is to mock the view, and write several assertions against state of this mocked view, which would be represented visually in the real life app. Thanks to such an approach there is no need for running full GWTTestCase, which takes a lot of time and should be rather put in the category of integration testing, not unit testing.
If you would try both MVP approaches, the unit tests could look like:
MVP 1:
@Test
public void shouldAddContactOnAddContactClicked() {
// given
ContactsPresenter.Display display = mock(ContactsPresenter.Display.class);
MockButton addButton = new MockButton();
given(display.getAddButton()).willReturn(addButton);
ContactsDisplay.Presenter presenter = new ContactsPresenter();
presenter.bindView(display);
presenter.setContacts(new ArrayList<Contact>());
// when
addButton.click();
// then
verify(display).addContact(any());
assertThat(presenter.getContacts().size(), is(1));
}
Where the MockButton is something I described here:
Comprehensive Pros/Cons of Mocking Frameworks for GWT
Although possible, it is not really convenient to mock things this way. The MVP2 approach seems to perform better:
@Test
public void shouldAddContactOnAddContactClicked() {
// given
ContactsView view = mock(ContactsView.class);
ContactsView.Presenter presenter = new ContactsPresenter();
presenter.bindView(view); // assuming that presenter will call view.setPresenter(this)
presenter.setContacts(new ArrayList<Contact>());
// when
presenter.onAddContactClicked();
// then
verify(view).addContact(any());
assertThat(presenter.getContacts().size(), is(1));
}
Another reason for using the second approach is the problem in MVP1 with declaring elements of the display, which would trigger different events (e.g. ClickEvent, FocusEvent). MVP2 also makes things easier when it comes to UiBinder.
Avoid using HasXxxHandlers, i.e. use the approach from the part 2 article where each peer has a reference to the other. HasXxxHandlers are far too complicated to mock, particularly when using mocking libraries such as Mockito or EasyMock.
For best testability, you'd inject the view into the presenter and the presenter would then call a setPresenter or setDelegate method of the view (that way, you can unit test that you correctly call that method, at the right time). When using Activities, where your activity is a presenter, you'll likely call view.setPresenter(this) in start and view.setPresenter(null) in onStop and onCancel; that way you can have a singleton view shared with several presenters (though no more than a single one at a time, obviously).
