Ram wrote: > Well I have this fairly large application with restful authentication > and a few other plugins in it. I developed it wholly otherwise. > This is my first ROR app. And I learnt of Test Driven Development > quite late. > Ive reached the point where I need to cover my code with good test > coverage.
Open a new Rails project in a new folder. Rewrite every tiny detail of your old project into the new one. If your old project has a model Foo, you start with script/generate model Foo, and get the foo_test.rb. You edit that to write a _useful_ test on one or two fields of Foo, and you pass the test by adding those fields to the migration and doing something with them in a method inside Foo. (BTW, don't add a migration for each field - edit the existing migrations until you deploy them...) Going this way prevents you from cheating, and helps you refactor. The new project should be finished very soon. > - should i start with unit tests? how paranoid should i be about them > (if at all there's a unit of measurement for that)? The test to code ratio should be 2:1. And start with useful features, not layers. To write a useful feature, write new tests and code into each layer that it needs. > - i understand too much dependency on fixtures can make my tests > brittle. So i keep fixtures to a minimum? when exactly should I > absolutely use a fixture? Using my schedule, your fixtures will not be brittle. Just don't write assertions that expect useless things, like a count of found records. Test that all the records matched the find criteria. > - what tools should i definitely use besides test/unit? RSpec, > Autotest, Cucumber, Selenium, ... ? Those are mostly for documenting features to customers, not for TDD. Stick with unit tests, because RSpec would only add clutter if used as a TDD tool. Autotest is because all the Rails editors truly suck, and do not let you run one test at a time. (Yes, textmate lets you run one test at a time - if you rotate the freaking document back to the correct test between every edit. The quality of these editors makes me wonder if anyone who develops them actually uses TDD.) > What would probably be most important is how do I analyze my code to > see what tests are most important and start writing them? How do I > approach writing tests? Add features to your new project in order from highest business value and on down. -- Phlip --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
