[rspec-users] Cucumber - stub! or mock?

[Pat Maddox]

On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 4:14 PM, Tim Glen <tim at pivotib.com> wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> I've got some code that I (mostly) inherited. It essentially has a couple of
> AR class methods that look for a specific record by id:
>
> class Project < ActiveRecord::Base
>  class << self
>    def specific_project
>      @another_specific_project ||= Project.find(10) if Project.exists?(10)
>    end
>
>    def another_specific_project
>      @specific_project ||= Project.find(11) if Project.exists?(11)
>    end
>  end
> end
>
> Typically, when I've specced this code (or more accurately, code that uses
> it), I've stubbed out those methods to return a mocked model. Lately, I've
> started using cucumber and adding stories for areas we're adding features to
> or finding regressions in. From what I can tell, I can't stub or mock
> anything from within cucumber step files. Realizing that the pattern is a
> bit of code smell, I feel like I have two directions I could go:
> 1. Is there a way to stub out the model to return some fixture-type records?

I don't think you're really supposed to mock or stub when using cucumber.

> 2. Does anyone have an idea as to how we could refactor this into a better
> pattern? Those 2 "projects" are pretty specific to the production data and
> will "never be edited," but it still doesn't make me comfortable.

Maybe you could add a column that represents the unique characteristic
of the particular projects.  I'd probably end up with:

def internal_project
  @internal_project ||= Project.find(:first, :conditions => "internal IS TRUE")
end

def demo_project
  @demo_project ||= Project.find(:first, :conditions => "demo IS TRUE")
end

or maybe have one column and let its value change:

def internal_project
  @internal_project ||= Project.find(:first, :conditions => "role='internal'")
end

def demo_project
  @demo_project ||= Project.find(:first, :conditions => "role='demo'")
end

Pat