Apart from private or public methods I see a problem in your test case.
You don't make sure that your mac_address is returned in exactly the way
you want - you are merely saying it should look like the return value of
some (protected) method you call (normalize_mac).
Let's assume this method was implemented wrong and just returns nil.
Let's further assume that @signup.mac_address calls a reader method
returning nil, too. Such an implementation, though wrong, would satisfy
your spec!
A second problem is, that the parameter you are passing to the
normalize-method will already have been transformed before your method
gets its hands on it. You are not passing the init value but the value
that is returned be a read operation on the mac_address field.
What you really should specify is your concrete mac address format:
it "should return a valid mac address" do
@signup.mac_address = "00-11-22-33-44-55"
@signup.mac_address.should == "00:11:22:33:44:55"
end
Now you are not only implementation independent but your spec is also
saying more.
François
barsalou schrieb:
> It's interesting that this thread has started because I just ran into
> this problem.
>
> The error I got was:
>
> NoMethodError in 'Signup she be a valid mac address'
> protected method `normalize_mac' called for #<Signup:0x408c0434>
> ./spec/models/signup_spec.rb:10:
>
>
> Here's the spec:
>
> describe Signup do
> before(:each) do
> @signup = Signup.new
> end
>
> it "she be a valid mac address" do
> @signup.mac_address = "00-11-22-33-44-55-66"
> normalized = @signup.normalize_mac(@signup.mac_address)
> @signup.mac_address.should == normalized
> end
> end
>
>
> I have a model that has mac_address attribute. In the before
> validation, I wanted to make the mac address have colons(:) instead of
> whatever the user typed in which could have spaces between, dashes,
> nothing at all.
>
> My thought was to just remove all of those special characters validate
> it against a regex then if it passed the regex check produce the mac
> address with the colons included.
>
> And, if I understand it properly, Pat's statement is saying that I
> really shouldn't be protecting that method...which would fix my problem.
>
> So my question is then, how do you know when to use protected and
> private or do I just do what Rick suggested and use send?
>
> I just realized this isn't really an rspec question...so I'll just move along.
>
> Mike B.
>
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