Good point, that's actually I am debating with myself everyday and haven't
got a clear answer. This is classical "calssic unit tester" vs. mockist war.
:)
Talking about this case:
1. I haven't checked how should valite_presence_of is implemented, but it
could pretty much be checking if the value is left blank. So it is behavior
tests
2. I couldn't see any reason why I would want to write my own version of
check_to_see_if_this_thingy_is_in_my_whatsis. So this is not a very
realistic assumption.
3. By checking if validation fails when a value is left blank, I am actually
kind of testing Rails and here's why: what if they introduce a bug in
validates_presence_of that makes my test break? What if they have a bug in
valid? to make my test break? To strictly just testing *my* own code, the
test should be something like
Person.should_receive(:validates_presence_of).with(:email)
I am not really advocating the view of mockists. Just throw a question here.
:)
Yi
On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 11:40 PM, Stephen Eley <sfe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 11:42 PM, Yi Wen <hayafi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Without this syntax sugar, we still have to test validates_presence_of to
> > make sure it's there and won't broken, right?
>
> Wrong. You don't have to test validates_presence_of. What matters,
> and therefore what you should test, is whether the model will complain
> at you if a particular value is left empty.
>
> validates_presence_of happens to be the name of the method in
> ActiveRecord that does that. But if you decide to write your own
> check_to_see_if_this_thingy_is_in_my_whatsis() method that does the
> same thing, a good *behavior* spec will not break. Because the
> behavior remains the same.
>
> If your spec breaks because you changed a method call, you're not
> testing behavior any more. You're testing syntax.
>
>
>
> --
> Have Fun,
> Steve Eley (sfe...@gmail.com)
> ESCAPE POD - The Science Fiction Podcast Magazine
> http://www.escapepod.org
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>
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