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I have a class Foo that prints something to stdout and I want to be able to write tests for it. So I created a trait to abstract println!, and gave it a prod implementation and a test implementati...
Question
rust
#1: Initial revision
Writing a testable console program
I have a class `Foo` that prints something to stdout and I want to be able to write tests for it. So I created a trait to abstract `println!`, and gave it a prod implementation and a test implementation. The test implementation simply writes the strings to a vector, so that tests can make assertions on the contents of the vector. The problem is that since the `MockIO` modifies itself, I'm forced to write the method's signature as `fn println(&mut self, s: &str)` instead of `fn println(&self, s: &str)`. Which in turns forces me to sprinkle `mut`s all over the code. ``` // main.rs mod foo; mod io; fn main() { let mut io_interface = io::StdIO{}; foo::Foo::print_hello(&mut io_interface); } ``` ``` // foo.rs use crate::io::{self, IO}; pub struct Foo { } impl Foo { pub fn print_hello<I>(io_interface: &mut I) where I: IO { io_interface.println("Hello, World!"); } } #[cfg(test)] #[test] fn print_hello_world() { let mut mock_io = io::MockIO::new(); Foo::print_hello(&mut mock_io); assert_eq!(mock_io.outputs[0], "Hello, World!"); } ``` ``` // io.rs pub struct StdIO; pub trait IO { fn println(&mut self, s: &str); } impl IO for StdIO { fn println(&mut self, s: &str) { println!("{}", s); } } #[cfg(test)] pub struct MockIO { pub outputs: Vec<String>, } #[cfg(test)] impl IO for MockIO { fn println(&mut self, s: &str) { self.outputs.push(s.to_string()); } } #[cfg(test)] impl MockIO { pub fn new() -> Self { MockIO { outputs:vec![] } } } ``` So my questions are: * is there a way to write `MockIO` so that I don't have to change the signature of `IO::println()` for the sake of the test class? * is there a better way to solve this problem altogether? Feel free to point out any non-idiomatic code as well. I've done a fair bit of software development but am new to Rust.