Sending data from JMVC back to C# is a trivial exercise. I have, fortunately, been handicapped with sufficient approval that I feel like I am no longer experimenting. That means that I am less inclined to do things that are mere scaffolding as I have been doing so far. I was thrilled to merely be able to receive a data structure and then display it before. Now I want the next step to be one that contributes more fully to the development cycle.
My plan had been to make JMVC present an input box, collect the data and send it back to the database. I called it, "completing the loop." As I worked into that, I realized that I would need to implement a number of structures to do that and, vis paragraph one here, I felt like I would be wasting time to do that as a mere demonstration. After a day of huffing and puffing, I decided that I needed to decided if the target database was fronted by nHibernate. I also felt like the process of figuring that out would answer a lot of questions.
Then I found a great nHibernate tutorial. It's fourteen video lessons and, if the first is typical, it is an incredibly valuable contribution to the world. Not only did the guy give me view of nH, but also I got to witness someone actually using Visual Studio, see his code and hear how .NET types think about things. I finally understand .dll, for example, and how resources are connected and many other things.
Among those is a more practical understanding of unit testing. Instead of making a display page to show us that his demo worked, he fired up a unit test. This is a huge Eureka! moment for me. I've tried to understand Test Driven Design for a long time, but, having not really seen much in the way of unit testing, I couldn't quite understand how it works. Now I have a clue.
I also saw that this guy, for whom I am developing an intense, loving Stockholm Syndrome, uses mbUnit for his unit testing and made it look easy. I investigated. Most people think that Visual Studio's new, built-in, unit testing will, in the future, be a fully competent framework. A lot think that, even when that happens, the reliance on a single development team at Microsoft will prevent it from being as rich a tool as the other leading one, mbUnit. Since both my colleagues and I are all about open source, that die is cast.
I downloaded mbUnit and installed it. That was the last happy moment of my day.
I haven't yet been able to figure out how to get either VS unit testing or mbUnit to see my code. I spent hours flogging myself about it. I'd give it up but really think that it is going to be the best way to make it so that database server development can be truly separated from control/view development. I have always been confident that unit testing is a crucial technology. Now I think it will make my life easier and quicker. If only I could make it work.