[rspec-users] Preconditions

[David Chelimsky]

On 9/8/07, Pat Maddox <pergesu at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/8/07, Wincent Colaiuta <win at wincent.com> wrote:
> > El 8/9/2007, a las 2:15, Pat Maddox escribió:
> >
> > > * Descriptions should be broken up based on the required fixture.  I
> > > don't split them up until I actually have to.  For example, if I'm
> > > writing a Stack class.  I'd probably start off with
> > >
> > > [snip]
> > >
> > > For a simple spec like this it's okay.  We could factor out the
> > > Stack.new call, and there's one other smell, but we'll get to that in
> > > a minute.
> > >
> > > Now what if we want to peek the stack?
> > >
> > > [snip]
> > >
> > > Now we've got clear duplication in three places:
> > >   (1) The constructor
> > >   (2) Call to add_item
> > >   (3) the 'it' specifier!
> > >
> > > It's clear that the fixture for "should not be empty" and "should let
> > > you peek" are the same.  They're also different from the "should be
> > > empty" so we split them up:
> > >
> > > [snip]
> > >
> > > There are two key benefits to that.  The first is that it's obvious
> > > where new specifications need to go.  The behavior for #pop whether a
> > > stack is empty or has an item is going to be different.  Also if you
> > > need some behavior that changes with 3 items, you can probably figure
> > > out that you should create a new description.
> > >
> > > An even bigger benefit is that it minimizes the brain processing
> > > required to figure out a spec.  If you create the fixture in the setup
> > > and don't vary it, it's trivial to scan through some simple
> > > expectations.
> > >
> > > This has to do with the smell that I alluded to earlier, which was the
> > > call to add_item.  Ideally your example will contain just one
> > > expectation and no other setup.  This reduces the concepts that change
> > > from example to example.  Change is where bugs pop up most of the
> > > time.  So if you're doing setup in an example, then you probably want
> > > to split it out from the current description.  In fact, in real life I
> > > would have split the descriptions up immediately after writing the
> > > "should not be empty" example.
> >
> > Brilliantly written example, very clear!
> >
> > +1
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Wincent
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > rspec-users at rubyforge.org
> > http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users
> >
>
> To give credit where it's due, I'm pretty sure that's from my memory
> of the early examples on rspec.rubyforge.org.

Thanks for that Pat. We pulled that tutorial down a while ago but you
can get the textile source for it like so:

svn export svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/rspec/tags/REL_0_8_0/doc/src/tutorials

Cheers,
David

>
> Pat
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