RSpec (on Rails)

After much demand for a talk about RSpec from LRUG members, I stepped up to the bat. This talk introduces RSpec and shows how to use it with Rails instead of the default Test::Unit tests.

Given at the July 2007 LRUG meeting (http://lrug.org/meetings/2007/06/20/july-2007-meeting/). James Mead gave a talk about mocks (http://jamesmead.org/blog/2007-07-22-an-introduction-to-mock-objects-in-ruby) at the same meeting, so I didn't go into any detail there.

Transcript

1. RSpec (on Rails) Tom Stuart tom@experthuman.com
2. Weasel words Who am I, anyway? Not an expert, just a satisfied customer. This is a distillation of public documentation. BDD & RSpec: controversial? YOU DECIDE. This is just an infomercial.
3. rspec.rubyforge.org davidchelimsky.net behaviour-driven.org dannorth.net
4. Testing
5. verifying code correctness “ ”
6. Ruby: Test::Unit Rails: Test::Unit (+ ActionController::Assertions, fixtures, etc)
7. 1. Think of some functionality you want 2. Write a test for it (and watch it fail) 3. Write the code necessary to pass the test 4. Refactor Toward Deeper Insight™ 5. Goto 1 6. Profit! Test-Driven Development Is this “testing”?
8. WIKIPEDIA Practitioners emphasize that test-driven development is a method of designing software, not merely a method of testing. “ ” Test-driven development From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
9. WIKIPEDIA In linguistics, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis states that there is a systematic relationship between the grammatical categories of the language a person speaks and how that person both understands the world and behaves in it. “ ” Sapir–Whorf hypothesis From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
10. WIKIPEDIA Put simply, the hypothesis argues that the nature of a particular language influences the habitual thought of its speakers. Different patterns of language yield different patterns of thought. “ ” Sapir–Whorf hypothesis From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
11. A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. — Alan Perlis “ ”
12. Test-Driven Development In proper TDD we’re not really verifying code, we’re specifying behaviour. But the vocabulary is all testing-oriented: • methods named “test_...” • conditions verified with “assert” • classes called “Test”, “TestCase”, ...
13. insidious! distracting! too much freedom!
14. The deeper I got into TDD, the more I felt that my own journey had been less of a process of gradual mastery than a series of blind alleys. “
15. I remember thinking “if only someone had told me that!” more often than I thought “wow, a door has opened.”
16. I decided it must be possible to present TDD in a way that gets straight to the good stuff and avoids the pitfalls. My response is behaviour- driven development. — Dan North ”
17. Behaviour
18. Behaviour-Driven Development Specify behaviour, don’t verify state. (New names for old TDD ideas.) Adds no technical power... ...but adds psychological power through constraints. (& technical convenience through a DSL in RSpec)
19. Test::Unit RSpec test suites specifications fixtures behaviours tests examples assertions expectations
20. • ...to do TDD right • ...to write specs that also serve as intention-revealing documentation These new words make it easier and more natural...
21. Anatomy of a specification
22. behaviour example example
23. specification
24. Account when first created - should have a balance of £0 - should allow deposits Account when at overdraft limit - should not allow withdrawals Finished in 0.006646 seconds 3 examples, 0 failures
25. Expectations (Great!)
26. When RSpec executes specifications, it defines #should and #should_not on every object in the system. These methods are your entry to the magic of RSpec. “ ” — rspec.rubyforge.org
27. RSpec includes many matchers. #should and #should_not take a matcher as an argument, and apply it to their receiver.
28. assert_equal(result, 42) result.should eql(42) result.should == 42
29. assert(!username.blank?) username.should_not be_blank dynamically-generated predicate matchers with be_, be_a_ and be_an_
30. assert(password.length >= 6) password.should have_at_least(6).characters post.should have_at_most(50).comments sugar
31. assert_raise(RecordNotSaved) do user.save! end lambda { user.save! }.should raise_error(RecordNotSaved)
32. ...and many more. (It’s easy to write your own matcher: any object that responds to #matches? and #failure_message will work.)
36. tom:~$ spec --color --format specdoc stack_spec.rb Stack when full - should be full - should not be empty - should return the top item when sent #peek - should NOT remove the top item when sent #peek - should return the top item when sent #pop - should remove the top item when sent #pop - should complain on #push (FAILED - 1) 1) 'Stack when full should complain on #push' FAILED expected StackOverflowError but nothing was raised ./stack_spec.rb:46: Finished in 0.007652 seconds 7 examples, 1 failure
38. tom:~$ spec --color --format specdoc stack_spec.rb Stack when full - should be full - should not be empty - should return the top item when sent #peek - should NOT remove the top item when sent #peek - should return the top item when sent #pop - should remove the top item when sent #pop - should complain on #push Finished in 0.007514 seconds 7 examples, 0 failures
39. Mocking (What he said.)
40. • state-based testing breaks encapsulation and is a barrier to refactoring • use mock objects to get away from testing state — test interactions instead • mocking everything (except the object under consideration) greatly reduces dependency and increases isolation • mocks are automatically verified when a spec finishes executing
41. RSpec has a built-in mocking framework. Mocking is an integral part of BDD, but not vice versa. You can already do this interaction-based behavioural testing with Test::Unit and Mocha (or FlexMock, or ...) These mocking frameworks can plug into RSpec too: Spec::Runner.configure do |config| config.mock_with :mocha end
42. @page = mock('page') @page.should_receive(:path).at_least(:once).and_return('/') Page.should_receive(:find).with("1").and_return(@page) obj.should_receive(:foo).with(an_instance_of(Bar))
43. sample.caboo.se
44. Typo
45. Rails
46. script/generate rspec_model Account admin:boolean script/generate rspec_controller Dog bark fetch script/generate rspec_scaffold Post title:string body:text Spec generators: Custom expectations for models, controllers, views and helpers
47. Test::Unit RSpec Unit tests Model examples Functional tests View, Controller & Helper examples Integration tests ?
48. Model examples Post.should have(:no).records user.should have(2).errors_on(:password)
49. Controller examples account = mock_model(Account) Account.should_receive(:find).with(37).and_return(account) response.should be_success response.should redirect_to(‘posts/1’) response.should render_template(‘list’) response.should have_text(‘some text’) #id, #to_param, #new_record?, #errors, #is_a?, #kind_of?, #instance_of?, #class
50. View examples response.should have_tag(‘input#person_address’) article = mock_model(Article) article.should_receive(:author).and_return(‘Joe’) article.should_receive(:text).and_return(‘Hi’) assigns[:article] = article assigns[:articles] = [article]
51. Places to start • rspec.rubyforge.org: tutorials and RDoc • script/generate rspec_scaffold • sample.caboo.se, etc • rspec-users