On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 2:24 AM, Justin Ko <jko...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Apr 11, 2012, at 7:08 AM, Michael Guterl wrote:
>
>> I'm building a ruby wrapper for a SOAP service using savon and I'm
>> running into some issues with testing and I would love some feedback.
>> I have added some tests with the help of VCR, but unfortunately that
>> doesn't feel right given some of the constraints I'm running into.
>>
>> 1. The service provides no test mode or environment.
>> 2. Putting the service into a known state is difficult because some
>> objects are soft deleted. Attempting to save an object with the same
>> unique identifier as a soft deleted object is a unique constraint
>> violation. In order to test saving a new object in the system, an
>> actual new object will need to be created in our production
>> environment every time.
>> 3. It is hard to simulate certain conditions because of #2. Other
>> conditions like session timeouts are also difficult to simulate,
>> because it requires actually sleeping in my spec. Sleeping in the
>> spec is only necessary when not using VCR cassettes, once they are in
>> place the sleep is no longer needed.
>> 4. In the past when using VCR, I would be able to clear my
>> spec/cassettes directory, run the tests again, and refresh what was
>> there. Because of #2 this isn't possible for any tests that persist
>> new objects using the service.
>>
>> The only thing I can come up with is building a clone of the service
>> using sinatra and provide a subset of the functionality I need for
>> testing. I'm fairly certain this will allow me to get around all of
>> the constraints I mentioned and allow me to stub out specific requests
>> to simulate different conditions.
>>
>> Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
>>
>> Best,
>> Michael Guterl
>> _______________________________________________
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>> rspec-users@rubyforge.org
>> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users
>
> They technically have no "sandbox", but could you open another production
> account for your own personal sandbox? Otherwise you're dealing with some
> serious limitations.
>
I could, but I'm still dealing with the constraint that records can
never be deleted: #2. Also the fact that there is no way to simulate
certain conditions is also painful. A good API should have a way for
me to simulate an error, no? I'm getting by with little or no tests
around this code, but I don't think it will last for long...
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