Best practice for creating test classes

Question

I am quite new to java using NetBeans 6.1 with JDK 1.6 and for some of the functions I created I want to write test classes to run automated tests to check consistence when I do some changes.
I read something about this topic getting confused about different approaches depending on the jdk version / netbeans version used and however found very different looking examples on the net.
Now I am very confused how to continue. Any hint would be helpful,
Thanks,
Martin.

Answer 1

georgemc wrote:
Can you expand on that? I suspect you're talking about JUnit < 4 vs JUnit 4, since JUnit 4 can only work with Java versions from 5 onwards.Yes, I am talking about JUnit - On NetBeans the default was 3.8.2 if I remember right and I installed 4.1.
The problem starts where to start; creating a JUnit Test, Test for Existing Class or Test Suite.
Trying to create tests for an existing class it shows me something like:
import org.junit.After;
import org.junit.Before;
import org.junit.Test;
import static org.junit.Assert.*;
public class TestsTest {
    public TestsTest() {
    @Before
    public void setUp() {
    @After
    public void tearDown() {
}using 4.1
but
import junit.framework.TestCase;
public class TestsTest extends TestCase {
    public TestsTest(String testName) {
        super(testName);
    protected void setUp() throws Exception {
        super.setUp();
    protected void tearDown() throws Exception {
        super.tearDown();
}using 3.8.2
so first the versions seem to work completely different. The older version seems more understandable (for me as a beginner). Is it "save/stable" to use the already the newer JUnit? How is the support in NetBeans with the newer version - I mean do I have to expect problems not going with the older one?