Hidden Dependency

Definition:

• Closely related to the local hero, a unit test that requires some existing data to have been populated somewhere before the test runs. If that data wasn’t populated, the test will fail and leave little indication to the developer what it wanted, or why… forcing them to dig through acres of code to find out where the data it was using was supposed to come from.

References:

Quality attributes

• - Code Example

• - Cause and Effect

• - Frequency

• - Refactoring

• Anti-Patterns - Digital Tapestry

• Categorising Test Smells

• Smells in software test code: A survey of knowledge in industry and academia

• Tdd antipatterns: Local hero

• Test-Driven Development: TDD Anti-Patterns

• Unit testing Anti-patterns catalogue