[rspec-users] A Thread / Mock question

[Tobias Grimm]

Hi!

What I'm trying at the moment is to build specifications for some
background thread code. What I want is a class Task and a class
TaskRunner. The TaskRunner should run a task in a background thread. It
should also indicate the status of the running task when calling the
running? method.

That's basically, what I came up with so far:

class TaskRunner
    def initialize
        @is_running = false
    end
   
    def running?
        return @is_running
    end
   
    def execute(task)
        @is_running = true
        Thread.new do
            task.run
            @is_running = false
        end
    end
end

class SampleTask
    def run
    end
end

context "The TaskRunner" do
    setup do
        Thread.stub!(:new).and_return do |block|
            block.call
        end
        @runner = TaskRunner.new
    end

    specify "should be running when a task is executed" do
        task = SampleTask.new
        task.should_receive(:run) do
            @runner.should_be_running
        end
        @runner.execute(task)
    end

    specify "should not be running after the task has been executed" do
        @runner.execute(SampleTask.new)
        @runner.should_not_be_running
    end
end

I don't want to have real threads in the specs, so I mocked the Thread
class to just execute the passed block within the main thread. In the
first specification I also mock the run method of the task to check
within that method, if the TaskRunner correctly indicates it's running
status. So far this works, but maybe there is a better solution. Any
suggestions?

Is there a way to use the above mocking of Thread.new and  pass a
parameter to the block executed by the thread, like this?:


    def execute(task)
        @is_running = true
        Thread.new(task) do |task_to_execute|
            task_to_execute.run
            @is_running = false
        end
    end


How can RSpec mock Thread.new in this case?

Maybe I should introduce some kind of ThreadFactory that creates
instances of TestableThread for the specifications.

bye,

Tobias