On 14 May 2009, at 05:01, Phlip wrote:
anmaxp wrote:
I'm having sort of an issue here, I'm trying to test the update of
the
last_login field upon login, here is my test
it "assigns a new last_login timestamp" do
User.expects(:update_attribute).at_least_once.returns(true)
User.any_instance.expects(:update_attribute).with(:field, value).etc.
An instance of User will itself call the .update_attribute. The
class won't call it.
However, I can't think of a reason not to just write the record,
reload it, and check the fields. And a _functional_ test should not
care how the record got written (update_attribute, save, or
whatever). A unit test might care, but functional tests need a
little more float...
I've got a reason. You're coupling the tests for this simple little
controller class to all the infrastructure and dependencies needed to
write the record to the database and reload it again. As easy as Rails
makes it for us to manage our database schemas, gratuitously
introducing dependencies in your code like this is a bad habit to get
into. It can lead to tests that are fragile to failing when code is
changed far away from the place they're apparently testing. The tests
also run slowly, which makes working on systems written like this
boring.
I would argue that a true 'functional test'[1] would not even care
that there is a controller class, and would be exercising the system
via the user interface.
[1]http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FunctionalTest
Matt Wynne
http://beta.songkick.com
http://blog.mattwynne.net
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