[rspec-users] specs on private methods

[Daniel Tenner]

Might be a personal thing, but my approach is that I try to test the  
public behaviour of the object. Testing private methods is, imho,  
getting dangerously close to specifying how the object does its  
business, rather than what it does.

I would just spec the externally visible behaviour, where it occurs,  
and let the object implement it as it wants (using private methods or  
any other mechanism).

Daniel

On 8 Jan 2008, at 19:06 8 Jan 2008, Matt Patterson wrote:

> On 8 Jan 2008, at 18:39, Chris Olsen wrote:
>
>> How does a person test private methods?
>>
>> Is there a way to declare them as private, but retain any tests that
>> were written during the initial development?
>
> I'm rather liking Jay Field's approach (described at http://
> blog.jayfields.com/2007/11/ruby-testing-private-methods.html)
>
> In which he basically redeclares the private methods public for the
> duration of the test only, with a bit of block-scoped evaling  
> goodness.
>
> Matt
>
> -- 
>    Matt Patterson | Design & Code
>    <matt at reprocessed org> | http://www.reprocessed.org/
>
>
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