[rspec-users] Correct way to spec partials

[Matt Wynne]

On 12 Nov 2008, at 00:51, Jesse Clark wrote:
> On Oct 26, 4:49 am, "David Chelimsky" <dchelim... at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 8:07 PM, Oleksandr Rudyk  
>> <alex.ru... at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hi everybody,
>>> 1) Does anybody have full working example of how to test partial  
>>> templates?
>>> 2) What the correct place to testpartials: controller or view  
>>> spec? If
>>> controller correct place,
>>> should I use integrate_views?
>>
>> There are basically three options (from most granular to most  
>> coarse):
>>
>> 1. view examples rendering the partial directly
>> 2. view examples rendering a template that includes the partial
>> 3. controller examples with integrate_views
>>
>> In practice, I don't think I ever go for #3, and the choice between  
>> #1
>> and #2 is largely context-dependent. In the end you want to (or
>> rather, I want you to ;) ) be equally comfortable with all three
>> approaches, understand the pros and cons of each, and make a decision
>> on a case by case basis.
>
> Where can I find more information about how various contexts affect
> the choice between #1 and #2?
>
> I have a partial that is shared by two view templates and I only want
> to test the partial once. So I created a new spec file with a describe
> block for the partial. The partial is passed some locals and I would
> like to test in my examples that these local variables are displayed
> as expected. How would I go about setting these in the example so they
> are available to the partial when it renders?

What you can do is call the template from the example and set up a  
stub for each of the locals. So if I have a partial like this:

     <%= name %> makes cheese for <%= friend_name %>

Then in the example, you can do this:

     describe "when there's a name and a friend name"
         before(:each) do
	    template.stub!(:name).and_return("Mike")
             template.stub!(:friend_name).and_return("Susan")
         end
     end

Make sense?


In order to keep your view specs from becoming too brittle, I would  
strongly suggest that you 'stub out' the rendering of the shared  
partial in the specs for the two view templates that use the partial.  
I usually do this by making a special helper method for rendering the  
partial:

    <%= for relationship in relationships %>
        <%= render_relationship(relationship) %>
    <% end %>

This makes is easy to stub out the rendering in your main view  
templates' specs:

     before(:each) do
         template.stub!(:render_relationship)
     end

Of course you'll really want a Cucumber test that makes sure the whole  
stack fits together (locals are passed through with the correct names)  
but I'd suggest that's a much more flexible solution than tying your  
view specs together.

HTH,
Matt