May 13, 2009: MockCentral version 2.0.0 released!

All MockCentral components have been substantially enhanced for release 2.0.0. Significant upgrades spanning all components include:

• New value types: it is now possible to specify mock object method parameters and return types using enum and class constant values and Arrays of any type (which may be populated with as many additionally defined class instances as required). The MockCentralServer application will seamlessly build these values for you at test runtime.
• Constructor arguments for instance value types: mock object method parameters and return types specifying an "instance" or "throwable" value type can now be built automatically by the server at runtime using constuctor arguments. Need your mock object method to return a complex object built using other mocks, variable data, etc? Now it's very simple to point and click your way to constructing these definitions.
• Code and performance improvements: all MockCentral components have been thoroughly re-engineered to take advantage of the latest enhancements to the java language specification. Numerous minor (and a few major) bugs have been eliminated that affected various aspects of the MockCentral architecture.

Improvments to the MockCentralEditor Eclipse plug-in are also major, and include:

• New wizards: Every effort has been made to improve the speed and efficiency of creating new mock objects, method expectations and testing fixtures. Thus, multi-page wizards replace many of the sequential dialogs previous versions of the plug-in presented when you perform one of these actions. Settings for these wizards are now preserved so that you don't need to spend any time specifying various details that you don't want to change. Functionality from Eclipse's FilteredItemsSelectionDialog class has been incorporated into various wizards to make selecting class, interface and enum types quick and easy. Users of previous versions of the plug-in should be pleased with how much more streamlined all of these tasks have become.
• Error and warning markers: the plug-in now provides error and warning markers which will decorate configuration files (and particular nodes in the outline view when a file is open) and also contribute to the "Problems" view provided by Eclipse. This very significant enhancement can alert you when, for instance, a refactoring breaks a mock object method expectation definition, or a workspace or classpath change invalidates a fixture definition. Preferences can be set for the severity level for markers for various problem categories using the standard Eclipse preferences dialog.
• Improved classloading mechanism:Version 2.0.0 of the plug-in contains important improvements to the classloading procedure used when defining mock object interfaces and building method expectations. These improvements make much better use of Eclipse's jdt library to boost efficiency and assure all the code you want to test or reference is available to the plug-in.

The MockCentralServer application has also been altered to make it easier to use in the following ways:

• Non-qualified mock object access: It is no longer required that you specify a fixture name when accessing or verifying a mock object defined in your configuration if your config file does not contain multiple fixtures.
• Exception classes modified: All MockCentralServer exception classes have been converted to RuntimeException types, eliminating the need for try/catch blocks in your test code.

older news

October 21, 2008: Eclipse Plug-in version 1.3.1 released. Updated code that was causing the MockCentral editor to load improperly in recent Ganymede versions of Eclipse.

February 2, 2007: MockCentralServer version 1.1.0 released. Removed code (a bug) that prevented specifying primitive int return types for method expectations.

January 29, 2007: MockCentralEditorCore version 1.1.1 and Eclipse Plug-in version 1.2.1 released. These releases work together to enhance the ui by allowing the user to select fully-qualified class names (for mock object interfaces, new Object instances and Throwable method expectation results) from a list generated after the user has entered a non-fully-qualified class name. As before, the core library is included with the plugin, it does not require a separate download.

January 5, 2007: Eclipse Plug-in version 1.2.0 released. This release contains a new classloading mechanism for locating interfaces to mock and classes to use as method parameters and return types and should solve any "Class not found" problems previously encountered. Essentially, any class on the build path of the java project containing the Mock Central configuration file is now accessible to the classloader. That includes classes from other projects, internal and external libraries and class folders, variables, etc. Just add the necessary jar files, folders or projects to the build path of the project.