Chapter 12. Developing and testing with Mule
In this chapter
- Leveraging Maven with Mule
- Using an IDE to aid development with Mule
- Writing tests for Mule projects
Developers all have different styles and preferences for writing software and managing the development process. Some embrace the command line, using vi to edit their code along with configuration files and scripts to package and deploy their applications. Others prefer to centralize their development using a powerful IDE. Most of us probably use some combination of the two approaches, perhaps using an IDE, such as Eclipse or IDEA, to write code and then using the Unix shell tools for packaging and deployment. While these proclivities may vary, one thing developers can usually agree on is testing. Testing techniques such as unit, integration, and load testing allow us to ensure our code works in isolation and conjunction—letting us refactor in confidence.
Mule simplifies these tasks by providing facilities for build management, IDE integration, and testing support. We’ll examine all of these in this chapter, starting with Mule’s support for Maven, a popular, open source build management framework. Once you’re comfortable managing your Mule projects with Maven, we’ll examine how an IDE can simplify Mule development. Finally, we’ll see how to perform integration and load testing with Mule using the JUnit test framework, Mule’s Test Compatibility Kit, and the JMeter load testing tool.