I really like technoweenie’s plugin model_stubbing. It’s a nice alternative to fixtures, and an even nicer way to create stubs in your tests and specs.

Unfortunately the StreetEasy codebase is still on Rails 1.2.x which caused compatibility problems with the plugin. Rails 2 refactored Fixtures and database statements a bit.

I had to modify the plugin to get it to work with older versions of Rails. I forked the project on github and post about it to help anyone who’d like to use the plugin but is not upgraded to Rails 2 yet.

github homepage: forked model_stubbing
public clone url: git@github.com:jacqui/model_stubbing.git

[edit] btw, simplelog was munging the href for the public clone url; it seems to like prepending http:// to links, so i just removed the anchor tags from it.

in which I try to get done with my mockamator already by writing stories describing what it should do, learning how to work with Story Runner in RSpec along the way.

references:
* What’s in a Story by Dan North
* Great step by step example driven tutorial for Rspec on story runner
* RSpec docs on mock objects

This is my first attempt at a story. I already find this helpful as it forces me to make decisions and figure out what it is, exactly, that I’m trying to accomplish. And how.

The Nelson plugin should automagically create mocks (valid or invalid) for any given controller

Narrative:

Acceptance Criteria:

   1  Story "The Nelson plugin", %{
   2    should automagically create mocks 
   3    that are valid or invalid
   4    for any given controller
   5  }, :type => RailsStory do
   6  
   7    Scenario "in the before block of a controller spec" do
   8      When "calling Nelson.generate_mocks" do
   9        Nelson.generate_mocks(UserController, {:valid => true})
  10      end
  11  
  12      Then "a site mock should be generated" do
  13        @site.should_not be_nil
  14        @site.should be_a_kind_of(Site)
  15      end
  16  
  17      When "I request the UserController signup action in a get request" do
  18        get '/user/signup'
  19      end
  20  
  21      Then "response should be successful" do 
  22        response.should be_success
  23      end 
  24    end
  25  end

   1  jm:~/se/app/workspace (master) $ ruby stories/nelson_should_create_mocks.rb 
   2  Running 1 scenarios
   3  
   4  Story: The Nelson plugin
   5  
   6    
   7      should automagically create mocks 
   8      that are valid or invalid
   9      for any given controller
  10  
  11  
  12    Scenario: in the before block of a controller spec
  13  
  14      When calling Nelson.generate_mocks (FAILED)
  15  
  16      Then a site mock should be generated (SKIPPED)
  17  
  18      When I request the UserController signup action in a get request
  19  
  20      Then response should be successful
  21  
  22  1 scenarios: 0 succeeded, 1 failed, 0 pending
  23  
  24  FAILURES:
  25      1) The Nelson plugin (in the before block of a controller spec) FAILED
  26      NoMethodError: undefined method `generate_mocks' for Nelson:Class
  27      stories/nelson_should_create_mocks.rb:28:in `calling Nelson.generate_mocks'
  28  stories/nelson_should_create_mocks.rb:27
  29  stories/nelson_should_create_mocks.rb:20

this isn’t drop dead gorgeous or anything, but it worked ok for what i needed to do in the amount of time i felt like spending on it. i’d love to see how someone would make it better though, as usual.


and argh, i really need to spend some time on the css here. it’s hard to read code i post, and i apologize about that. lame!

download it: teststospecs.rb

   1  <pre>
   2  #!/usr/bin/env ruby
   3  
   4  # This script moves the files from test/unit and test/functional to spec/models and spec/controllers
   5  
   6  require File.expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/../../config/environment')
   7  
   8  class TestsToSpecs
   9    
  10    def initialize
  11      @tests_dir = File.join(RAILS_ROOT, 'test')
  12      @specs_dir = File.join(RAILS_ROOT, 'spec')
  13  
  14      @units_dir = Dir.new(File.join(@tests_dir, 'unit'))
  15      @models_dir = Dir.new(File.join(@specs_dir, 'models'))
  16      @funcs_dir = Dir.new(File.join(@tests_dir, 'functional'))
  17      @ctrl_dir = Dir.new(File.join(@specs_dir, 'controllers'))
  18    end
  19    
  20    def convert
  21      [{:s => @models_dir, :tu => @units_dir}, {:s => @ctrl_dir, :tu => @funcs_dir}].each do |dir_set|
  22        make_tests_specs(dir_set)
  23      end
  24    end
  25  
  26    def spec_file_name(test_file)
  27      spec_file = test_file.gsub(/test/, "spec")
  28      spec_file.gsub!(/unit/, "models")
  29      spec_file.gsub!(/functional/, "controllers")
  30      spec_file.gsub!(/_controller/, "")
  31      spec_file
  32    end
  33    
  34    def make_tests_specs(dir_set)
  35      dir = dir_set[:tu]
  36      dir.each do |file|
  37        unless file == "." or file == ".."
  38  
  39          full_file = File.join(dir_set[:tu].path, file)
  40          if File.directory? full_file
  41            spec_file = spec_file_name(full_file)
  42            FileUtils.mkdir_p(spec_file) unless File.exists? spec_file
  43            make_tests_specs({:tu => Dir.new(full_file), :s => Dir.new(spec_file)})
  44          else
  45            new_spec = File.join(dir_set[:s].path, file.gsub(/_test/, "_spec"))
  46            new_spec.gsub!(/_controller/, "")
  47            puts "converting TestCase #{full_file} to ExampleGroup #{new_spec}\n"
  48      
  49            old_file = File.new(full_file, "r+") # open for reading & writing
  50      
  51            if File.exists?(new_spec)
  52              puts "! a spec already exists for this test at #{new_spec}. Perhaps you should merge these by hand?\n"
  53            else
  54              new_file = File.new(new_spec, "w+") # create file for writing
  55              old_file.each do |line|
  56                if line =~ %r@require.*?test_helper@
  57                  new_file.puts "require '#{RAILS_ROOT}/test/test_helper'"
  58                  new_file.puts "require '#{RAILS_ROOT}/spec/spec_helper'"
  59                elsif line =~ %r@class.*?TestCase@ and line !~ %r@Controller@
  60                  new_file.puts "describe 'transitioning from TestCase to ExampleGroup' do"
  61                elsif line =~ %r@class\s*(.*?)Test@
  62                  new_file.puts "describe #{$1}, 'transitioning from TestCase to ExampleGroup' do"
  63                  new_file.puts "\tintegrate_views"
  64                elsif line =~ %r@def setup@
  65                  new_file.puts "\tbefore do"
  66                elsif line =~ %r@def test_(.*?)\n@
  67                  new_file.puts "\tit \"should #{$1.humanize.downcase}\" do"
  68                elsif line =~ %r@assert_response :success@
  69                  new_file.puts "\t\tresponse.should be_success"
  70                elsif line =~ %r@assert_response :redirect@
  71                  new_file.puts "\t\tresponse.should be_redirect"
  72                elsif line =~ %r@assert_redirected_to (.*?)\n@
  73                  new_file.puts "\t\tresponse.should redirect_to(#{$1})"
  74                elsif line =~ %r@assert_equal\s*(\[.*?\]), (.*?)[,\n]@
  75                  new_file.puts "\t\t#{$1}.should == #{$2}"
  76                elsif line =~ %r@assert_equal\s*(.*?),\s*(.*?)[,\n]@mi
  77                  m1 = $1
  78                  m2 = $2
  79                  unless m1.nil? or m2.nil? 
  80                    unless m1.match(/nil/) or m2.match(/nil/)
  81                      new_file.puts "#{m2}.should == #{m1}"
  82                    end
  83                  end 
  84                elsif line =~ %r@assert assigns\(:(.*?)\)$@
  85                  new_file.puts "assigns[:#{$1}].should be_true"
  86                else
  87                  unless line =~ /^class.*?Controller.*?rescue_action.*?end$/i or line =~ /require '.*?_controller'/i or line =~ /^#/
  88                    new_file.puts line
  89                  end
  90                end
  91              end
  92              new_file.close
  93            end
  94            old_file.close
  95            # uncomment this if you want it to delete the old test files once it's finished.
  96            #File.delete(full_file) 
  97          end
  98        end
  99      end
 100    
 101    end
 102  end
 103  
 104  tts = TestsToSpecs.new
 105  tts.convert
 106  
 107  </pre>

I am going to be looking into RSpec 1.1 in the next couple of days. While we haven’t upgraded our application to run on Rails 2 yet, I am really interested in RSpec’s new integration with Test::Unit.

Right now, we have two rake tasks for ascertaining test coverage using rcov: rake spec:rcov and rake test:rcov. Since one runs our Test::Unit tests, and one runs our RSpec tests, the outcome is far from accurate.

My plan is to hopefully use RSpec’s new integration with Test::Unit to convert all our Test::Unit tests to RSpec - this was, after all, my Big Plan from the beginning. It’s just a lot of work and I dont have that much time. I think this will allow me to move them all into the spec directory and get the total test coverage much more accurately.

I’ll be posting my progress here.

In other news, I’m almost done with the initial version of my automated mock framework plugin - nelson. More on that later as well.

The rspec docs are great, but the example code for writing Rails controller specs is a little inconsistent.

For future reference, the ‘best way’ to specify your controller is like so:

describe Manage::ListingsController, "manage listings - for the boss" do

the old way, which you shouldn’t use, was like this:

describe "manage listings - for the boss" do controller_name "Manage::Listings"

I ran into a problem specifying my namespaced controller the old way; controller_name calls camelize on the string you pass it after splitting it on the “::” - since we have several ListingsController classes in various namespaces, my spec was sending requests to the wrong ListingsController spec, causing all kinds of failures and sadness.

Thx to the caboose geniuses for helping me out on this one, notably court3nay