Setting Up BDD Testing for a Private Method

As I laid out in the start of this series, the goal here is testing beyond what I had been doing up to this point. The background is laid out here.

The next challenge was to test a private function. I didn't find a lot on this issue other than people were wondering how to do it although, admittedly, I didn't look for too long.

Here is the function which, except for the "private" part is the same as the previous method.

private function privateSimpleMath(numeric numA, numeric numB){
    return numA * numB;
}

I tried the same tests but got this (completely expected) error:

How to get around that without compromising the application in production? This might be simplistic and I'm open to debate but I simply extended my production component in another CFC and added a public function like this:

\tests\first\second\third\vanillaCFC\testVanilla.cfc:

component extends="testmods.first.second.third.vanillaCFC" {
// Place your content here    

    public function privateSimpleMath(numeric numA, numeric numB)
    {
        return super.privateSimpleMath(numA, numB);
    }
}

The Test Code

component extends="testbox.system.BaseSpec"{
   
/*********************************** LIFE CYCLE Methods ***********************************/
   // executes before all suites+specs in the run() method   function beforeAll(){
      testobj=createObject("component","pttests.first.second.third.vanillaCFC.testVanilla");
      testme=testobj.privateSimpleMath(9,8);
   }

   // executes after all suites+specs in the run() method   function afterAll(){
   }

/*********************************** BDD SUITES ***********************************/
   function run(){
   
      describe( "My test Suite", function(){
         
         it( "be a number", function(){
                expect( testme ).toBeTypeOf('numeric');
         });
         
         it( "should be 72", function(){
                expect( testme ).toBe(72);
         });
         
      });
      
   }
   
}

Process and Result

This is the same test as before with the only difference being that I instantiated the CFC which will live in my testing suite and has a public function and extends my actual CFC which will go into production and stays private.