How best to test class that depends on constants in another file? - ruby

I'm writing a Ruby library - call it module MyLibrary - which depends upon a data parser. The parser is specific to the library, but may need to be swapped out for a different parser at a later date, so it makes sense to have it be a class nested in MyLibrary - class MyLibrary::Parser.
MyLibrary exposes a few exception types to the client, and the Parser may hit situations where it wants to raise these exceptions (and MyLibrary is happy to pass them through). So I have the following arrangement:
my_library.rb:
require 'parser'
module MyLibrary
class SomeException < RuntimeError
end
def self.do_it
parser = Parser.new
parser.parse_it
end
end
parser.rb
module MyLibrary
class Parser
def parse_it
if bad_stuff
raise SomeException, "Argh"
end
end
end
end
Now, I want to unit-test Parser using rspec.
parser_spec.rb
require 'parser'
RSpec.describe Parser do
it 'raises when bad stuff happens' do
expect { Parser.new.parse_it }.to raise_error(MyLibrary::SomeException)
end
end
But because I'm unit-testing the Parser and my_library.rb hasn't been required in, SomeException isn't defined.
What's my best method for providing SomeException within Parser's spec? Or am I going about this in completely the wrong way?

I think there are 2 things you could consider.
Building on maxple's comment, unless you have a specific reason for it, the SomeException class could just be defined in parser.rb. That class is the one raising the error, the spec test would work, and anyone requiring that file would have access to that exception. Since you don't even reference it in my_library.rb it seems like it would be fine. Another behavioral reason that supports this approach is if the error is a "Parsing" error, the exception name should reflect that and the Parser is the class that should own that. If the MyLibrary class is just forwarding any exception along, it doesn't matter what it is and it shouldn't be defined there.
If you want to keep the exception defined in my_library.rb, then I would suggest using a spec_helper.rb file, that lives in your spec folder, to load your full library. This is usually done by requiring your top level lib/my_library.rb file. Rspec commonly adds your top level lib folder to the ruby include path for just this purpose. Then each and every spec test file you write should require 'spec_helper'. In my experience this is probably the most idiomatic way to load all common dependencies for unit testing in rspec.

I haven't done much in rspec but wouldn't it help if you move the require 'parser' line from my_library.rb to parser.rb? The way I see it it's the Parser that needs that exception not the other way around.
Like I said my knowledge in this case is limited but I hope that will help, if not good luck in the search! :)

Related

Organizing monkey patches

I read a blog post that recommends namespacing your monkey patches so they can be easily viewed and included.
For example:
module CoreExtensions
module DateTime
module BusinessDays
def weekday?
!sunday? && !saturday?
end
end
end
end
Would go in the: lib/core_extensions/class_name/group.rb file.
It can be included in the DateTime class with the Module#include instance method (which a class inherits because a Class is a Module)
# Actually monkey-patch DateTime
DateTime.include CoreExtensions::DateTime::BusinessDays
My question is where do the include statements go? Is there a convention?
For example:
I have the following monkey patches:
# http://www.justinweiss.com/articles/3-ways-to-monkey-patch-without-making-a-mess/
module CoreExtensions
module String
module Cases
def snakecase
return self if self !~ /[A-Z]+.*/
# http://rubular.com/r/afGWPWLRBB
underscored = gsub(/(.)([A-Z])/, '\1_\2')
underscored.downcase
end
def camelcase
return self if self !~ /_/ && self =~ /[A-Z]+.*/
split('_').map{ |e| e.capitalize }.join
end
end
end
end
That live inside the lib/core_extensions/string/cases.rb file.
Where should I put my String.include CoreExtensions::String::Cases statement?
Also to be clear this is just a ruby project, does that make a difference?
I've tried putting it inside lib/devify.rb
require 'devify/version'
require 'devify/some_dir'
require 'devify/scaffold'
require 'devify/tree_cloner'
require 'devify/renderer'
require 'devify/project'
require 'devify/tasks/some_task'
require 'devify/tasks/bootstrap'
require 'core_extensions/string/cases'
module Devify
String.include CoreExtensions::String::Cases
end
This works and it makes sense why it works. It's because my entire app lives inside the Devify module or namespace.
This way is also good because I'm not polluting the global namespace correct? Because I'm only monkey patching Strings that live inside Devify?
Just not sure not if this is the right way to go about it.
It doesn't matter where you put the include call.
Calling String.include will always monkey patch the one String class that is used by all the strings in the entire object space. So best put the instruction at the top level as to not mislead readers of the code.
Monkey patching is always global.
It is a powerful feature and can be used for good.
If you are authoring a gem be aware that you're sharing a global namespace with others. The same is also true for top-level modules and even the gem name though. Shared namespaces are just a reality of shared code.
If you are looking for lexically scoped monkey patches look into the new refinement feature that was introduce with Ruby 2.
Refinements are an idea taken from Smalltalk's class boxes. Refinements are not without their own issues though, for example they lack support for introspection and reflection. Thus essentially making them stealth and unfit for production use.
If you are looking to limit the monkey patches to some string object only, consider either subclassing String or calling extend on an instance.
Although ruby offers many ways of changing the content of a class or a method dynamically, the monkey patching can lead to big problems and strange bugs. I read this post (http://www.virtuouscode.com/2008/02/23/why-monkeypatching-is-destroying-ruby/) about why it´s a bad idea to use monkey-patching.
In summary, many things that he says make sense. When you create a monkey-patching, you are assuming that it will only works at that project, and, maybe you can create collisions and unprevisible side-effects when more libraries with similar purposes are put together.
There are cases where the benefits of the monkey-patching were awesome, like ActiveSupport way of dealing with dates manipulation by monkey-patching the Fixnum class with the ago or from_now methods, or as the method to_json. However, monkey patching should be avoided.
The point is: Ruby is an object-oriented language, and you can achieve your objectives using object composition, or any other patterns. Monkey-patching, at some way, leads you in the opposite direction of object oriented philosophy, since you add more responsibilities to an pre-existent class and increases it's public interface to serve a new funcionallity.
Besides, it's not explicit the behavior of that class and the public methods available. You cannot know, by looking at the class definition, what it makes and what is it's role at the system, and how it interact with other objects. It makes a simple task much more harder at the end.
Monkey patching makes everything much more smaller and simpler, apparently, but avoiding it makes your code much more maintanable, easier to debug, read and test, and much more elegant, since it is compliant to the "OOP" patterns.

Disambiguate Function calls in Ruby

I am working through Learn Ruby The Hard Way and came across something intriguing in exercise 49.
In parser.rb I have a function named skip(word_list, word_type) at the top level, which is used to skip through unrequited words (such as stop words) in user input. It is not encapsulated in a class or module. As per the exercise I have to write a unit test for the parser.
This is my code for the Unit Tests:
require "./lib/ex48/parser"
require "minitest/autorun"
class TestGame < Minitest::Test
def test_skip()
word_list = [['stop', 'from'], ['stop', 'the'], ['noun', 'west']]
assert_equal(skip(word_list, 'stop'), nil)
assert_equal(skip([['noun', 'bear'], ['verb', 'eat'], ['noun', 'honey']], 'noun'), nil)
end
end
However, when I run rake test TESTOPTS="-v" from the command line, these particular tests are skipped. This seems to be because there is a clash with the skip method in the Minitest module because they run perfectly after I change the name to skip_words.
Can someone please explain what is going on here exactly?
"Top level functions" are actually methods too, in particular they are private instance methods on Object (there's some funkiness around the main object but that's not important here)
However minitest's Test class also has a skip method and since the individual tests are instance methods on a subclass of Test you end up calling that skip instead.
There's not a very simple way of dealing with this - unlike some languages there is no easy way of saying that you want to call a particular superclass' implementation of something
Other than renaming your method, you'll have to pick an alternative way of calling it eg:
Object.new.send(:skip, list, type)
Object.instance_method(:skip).bind(self).call(list, type)
Of course you can wrap this in a helper method for your test or even redefine skip for this particular Test subclass (although that might lead to some head scratching the day someone tries to call minitest's skip.

Rspec: how to test in isolation when using external dependencies in class constants

EDIT
In hindsight, it doesn't make any sense to call These::Encryption without actually requiring the dependency first, so the error I get about a missing constant is in fact a valid error.
And regarding These::Helpers - which can be optionally required - I am actually optionally including it by defining it before the rspec run begins.
I'll leave this question open for now, in case anyone has any more insights.
I have a method looking like this:
module My
class Service
extend Forwardable
def_delegators :#helpers, *These::Helpers.delegatable if defined?(These::Helpers)
ENCRYPTED_KEY_PASSWORD = These::Encryption.get('my_password')
end
end
It depends on two external classes helper and encryption. However, I want to test in full-isolation and stub out these two, as they have been tested elsewhere.
How can I do this in the context of the class?
The problem I am facing is that the class gets loaded when I require it, which triggers both the if defined? and #get methods, both failing, because I haven't had the opportunity yet to stub out these classes and their required methods.
One solution I used was to simply define the required method before the require statement:
require 'spec_helper'
module These
class Helpers
def self.delegatable
[:attribute]
end
end
end
require 'service'
describe My::Service do
...
end
But this can become unwieldable fast, and at this point I am doing RSpec's job.
Are there any better ways to solve this issue? Or should I just accept that in this case, the dependencies have to be loaded for the tests to work?

Multiple classes of the same name in Ruby

I have an existing codebase of unit tests where the same classes are defined for each test, and a program that iterates over them. Something like this:
test_files.each do |tf|
load "tests/#{tf}/"+tf
test= ::Kernel.const_get("my_class")
Test::Unit::UI::Console::TestRunner.run( test )
While working on these tests, I've realized that ruby allows you to require classes with the same name from different files, and it merges the methods of the two. This leads to problems as soon as the class hierarchy is not the same: superclass mismatch for class ...
Unfortunately, simply unloading the class is not enough, as there are many other classes in the hierarchy that remain loaded.
Is there a way to execute each test in a different global namespace?
While I figure that using modules would be the way to go, I'm not thrilled with idea of changing the hundreds of existing files by hand.
--EDIT--
Following Cary Swoveland's suggestion, I've moved the test running code to a separate .rb file and am running it using backticks. While this seems to work well, loading the ruby interpreter and requireing all the libraries again has a considerable overhead. Also, cross-platform compatibility requires some extra work.
first I wanted to propose the following solution:
#main.rb
modules = []
Dir.foreach('include') do |file|
if file =~ /\w/
new_module = Module.new
load "include/#{file}"
new_module.const_set("StandardClass", StandardClass)
Object.send(:remove_const, :StandardClass)
modules << new_module
end
end
modules.each do |my_module|
my_module::StandardClass.standard_method
end
#include/first.rb
class StandardClass
def self.standard_method
puts "first method"
end
end
#include/second.rb
class StandardClass
def self.standard_method
puts "second method"
end
end
this wraps each class with it's own module and calls the class inside it's module:
$ruby main.rb
second method
first method
But as you answered there are references to other classes so modules can break them.
I checked this by calling the third class from one of the wrapped classes and got:
include/second.rb:5:in `standard_method': uninitialized constant StandardClass::Independent (NameError)
so probably using backticks is better solution but I hope my answer will be helpful for some other similar situations.

Ruby Plugin Architecture

I'd like a very basic example of a tiny base program, that reads in two plugins and registers them. These two plugins hook into the base program in the same way in a unconflicting manner.
I'm very new to metaprogramming in any programming language for that matter, I'm not sure where to start.
i've been working on this very problem for a while now. i've tried a number of different ways to go about doing it and sought advice from a lot of people on it. i'm still not sure if what i have is 'the right way', but it works well and is easy to do.
in my case, i'm specifically looking at configuration and bringing in configuration plugins, but the principle is the same even if the terminology for mine is specific to cnfiguration.
at a very basic level, i have a Configuration class with nothing in it - it's empty. I also have a Configure method which returns the configuration class and lets you call methods on it:
# config.rb
class Configuration
end
class MySystem
def self.configure
#config ||= Configuration.new
yield(#config) if block_given?
#config
end
Dir.glob("plugins/**/*.rb").each{|f| require f}
end
MySystem.configure do |config|
config.some_method
config.some_value = "whatever"
config.test = "that thing"
end
puts "some value is: #{MySystem.configure.some_value}"
puts "test #{MySystem.configure.test}"
to get the some_method and some_value on the configuration class, I have the plugins extend the configuration object via modules:
# plugins/myconfig.rb
module MyConfiguration
attr_accessor :some_value
def some_method
puts "do stuff, here"
end
end
class Configuration
include MyConfiguration
end
and
# plugins/another.rb
module AnotherConfiguration
attr_accessor :test
end
class Configuration
include AnotherConfiguration
end
to load up the plugins, you only need one of code to look for the .rb files in a specific folder and 'require' them. this code can live anywhere as long as it's run right away when the file that contains it is loaded... i would probably put it in the class definition for MySystem or something like that to start with. maybe move it somewhere else when makes sense.
Dir.glob("plugins/**/*.rb").each{|f| require f}
run config.rb and you'll get output that looks like this:
do stuff, here
some value is: whatever
test that thing
there are a lot of options for implementing the various parts of this, but this should get you down the path.
It looks like this project may help: https://github.com/eadz/plugman
I haven't however found anything that will handle embedded (gem) dependencies however. Including Ruby files is straightforward but once your plugins start requiring other libraries then this simple model falls apart (either all the deps have to be installed with your application, or you need some other mechanism to get the plugin dependency gems into the process).

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