How to test Golang channels / go-routines

Question

I have a type that contains a byte of data, and takes a channel to post new data there. Other code can read the last written byte of data using a Read function.

Edit: for actual, runnable code, see https://github.com/ariejan/i6502/pull/3 especially files acia6551.go and acia6551_test.go. Tests results can be viewed here: https://travis-ci.org/ariejan/i6502/jobs/32862705

I have the following:

// Emulates a serial interface chip of some kind.
type Unit struct {
  // Channel used for others to use, bytes written here will be placed in rxChar
  Rx chan byte

  // Internal store of the last byte written.
  rxChar byte // Internal storage
}

// Used internally to read data store in rxChar
func (u *Unit) Read() byte {
  return u.rxChar
}

// Create new Unit and go-routing to listen for Rx bytes
func NewUnit(rx chan byte) *Unit {
  unit := &Unit{Rx: rx}

  go func() {
    for {
      select {
      case data := <-unit.Rx:
        unit.rxData = data
        fmt.Printf("Posted 0x%02X\n", data)
      }
    }
  }()

  return unit
}

My test looks like this:

func TestUnitRx(t *testing.T) {
  rx := make(chan byte)
  u := NewUnit(rx)

  // Post a byte to the Rx channel
  // This prints "Posted 0x42", as you'd expect
  rx <- 0x42

  // Using testing
  // Should read last byte, 0x42 but fails.
  fmt.Println("Reading value...")
  assert.Equal(t, 0x42, u.Read()) 
}

At first I figured the "Reading value" happened before the go-routing got around to writing the data. But the "Posted" message is always printed before "Reading".

So, two questions remain:

• Is this the best way to handle an incoming stream of bytes (at 9600 baud ;-))
• If this is the right way, how can I properly test it or what is wrong with my code?

Answer 1

Guessing by the pieces posted here, it doesn't look like you have anything guaranteeing the order of operations when accessing the stored data. You can use a mutex around any data shared between goroutines.

A better option here is to use buffered channels of length 1 to write, store, and read the bytes.

It's always a good idea to test your program with -race to use the race detector.

Since this looks very "stream" like, you very well may want some buffering, and to look at some examples of how the io.Reader and io.Writer interfaces are often used.