On Aug 30, 2010, at 12:54 PM, Brennon Bortz wrote:
On 30 Aug 2010, at 17:17, Justin Ko wrote:
On Aug 30, 11:59 am, Brennon Bortz <bren...@brennonbortz.com> wrote:
I am, as usual, assigning an instance variable in a controller's
index action to find all instances of a model in the database. I
want to write a spec that checks that this variable is assigned
correctly. I can do:
it "should provide a collection of widgets in @widgets" do
widget = Widget.create("title" => "my widget")
get :index
assigns[:widgets].should include(widget)
end
or:
it "should provide a collection of widgets in @widgets" do
widget = Factory.create(:widget)
get :index
assigns[:widgets].should include(widget)
end
Is there a better way to do this with a mock model, though?
Thanks,
Brennon Bortz
Software Researcher
Dundalk Institute of Technology
brennon.bo...@casala.ie
Ph.D. Researcher & Composer - Sonic Arts Research Centre
Queen's University, Belfast
bren...@brennonbortz.com / bbort...@qub.ac.uk
_______________________________________________
rspec-users mailing list
rspec-us...@rubyforge.orghttp://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users
Currently, what you're doing is checking that the Widget model
returns
the correct widgets. If you want to isolate your controller spec from
the model, you must stub or mock the model method call in the action.
Example:
it "..." do
widget = mock_model(Widget)
Widget.should_receive(:all).and_return([widget])
get :index
assigns[:widgets].should include(widget)
end
To check that Widget.all does indeed return the correct widgets, I
would spec that behaviour in the Widget model spec.
Hope that helps.
Hrm...that's exactly what I'd started with, and I was getting the
following error:
Failures:
1) WidgetsController GET 'index' should provide a collection of
widgets in @widgets
Failure/Error: assigns[:widgets].should include(widget)
expected [] to include #<Widget:0x81686290 @name="Widget_1001">
Stupidly, I had defined my controller method as:
def index
@widgets = Widget.find(:all)
end
Changed that assignment to Widget.all...problem solved.
And THAT is the problem with using mocks (or stubs) for this. You run
the very real risk of specifying the implementation details in the
structure of the spec/test. There is a problem when you've limited
the refactoring that can be done without altering the spec/test. Since
Widget.find(:all) and Widget.all should always have the same result,
the mere presence of the mock has cut off one possible refactoring.
(The one that I distaste most limits changing .find(params[:id])
to .find_by_id(params[:id]) by mocking/stubbing the call to find.)
Think about what really needs to be specified and be careful to mock/
stub as little as possible and to do so in a way that will limit
opportunities to refactor the least.
-Rob
Rob Biedenharn
r...@agileconsultingllc.com http://AgileConsultingLLC.com/
r...@gaslightsoftware.com http://GaslightSoftware.com/
_______________________________________________
rspec-users mailing list
rspec-users@rubyforge.org
http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users
