[rspec-users] Testing controller plugin

[Matt Wynne]

On 8 Feb 2010, at 16:53, David Chelimsky wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 11:58 AM, Phillip Koebbe <phillipkoebbe at gmail.com 
> > wrote:
>> Matt Wynne wrote:
>>>
>>> Yeah, you need to convince RSpec that the describe blocks you're  
>>> using are
>>> describing an ExampleGroup that's about a Rails Controller, then  
>>> it will mix
>>> in the right methods for you. I think you can do something like:
>>>
>>> describe MySpecialTestController, :type => :controller do
>>> end
>>>
>>> That's the general idea. I think someone else on the list will be  
>>> able to
>>> help more than me with the specifics.
>>>
>>> As for a plug-in, I don't know any off-hand... try a few popular  
>>> ones out
>>> on github and look for a spec directory in the root I guess.
>>>
>>
>> Thanks, again, Matt for taking the time to respond. I was kind of  
>> surprised
>> by how many plugins use test::unit. I did finally find subdomain_fu  
>> [1] and
>> was able to get something working. However, this approach tests the
>> controller in a project and requires rspec-rails to be installed  
>> for the
>> project. I would really like to be able to test this independent of a
>> project. So if anyone knows how to test a controller plugin with  
>> RSpec
>> independent of a project, I'd really appreciate some pointers.
>
> The problem I've run into in trying to spec controller extensions in
> isolation is that Rails controllers are not self-contained objects:
> they need a bunch of surrounding state set up for them to work
> properly. The testing facilities that ship with Rails hide that all
> from you, but they do a lot of work for you in every test method, or
> rspec code example.
>
> In theory, you should be able to say:
>
> =================================
> require 'rubygems'
> require 'action_controller/base'
>
> class SomeController < ActionController::Base
>  def index
>    render :text => "this text"
>  end
> end
>
> describe SomeController do
>  describe "index" do
>    it "returns some text" do
>      c = SomeController.new
>      c.index.should == "this text"
>    end
>  end
> end
> =================================
>
> When you do, however, you get this:
>
>  uninitialized constant ActionController::Metal (NameError)
>
> Try to solve that and you'll be starting down a deep rabbit hole. And
> even if you do solve that, the next rails release may well break
> whatever you did to solve it. The safest bet is to spec your plugin in
> the context of a complete rails app.

So maybe we just need to build a library of helpers that make it easy  
to create a modified rails app in Cucumber features?

> That said, I'd love to make this easier to do with rspec, but I won't
> have cycles to drive this for quite some time. If anyone else is
> interested in driving this, speak up and I'll be happy to assist.
>
> Cheers,
> David
>
>
>>
>> Here's what I have right now:
>>
>> http://gist.github.com/298281
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Phillip
>>
>>
>> [1] http://github.com/mbleigh/subdomain-fu
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cheers,
Matt

http://mattwynne.net
+447974 430184