Capture Ruby Logger output for testing - ruby

Question

I have a ruby class like this:
require 'logger'
class T
def do_something
log = Logger.new(STDERR)
log.info("Here is an info message")
end
end
And a test script line this:
#!/usr/bin/env ruby
gem "minitest"
require 'minitest/autorun'
require_relative 't'
class TestMailProcessorClasses < Minitest::Test
def test_it
me = T.new
out, err = capture_io do
me.do_something
end
puts "Out is '#{out}'"
puts "err is '#{err}'"
end
end
When I run this test, both out and err are empty strings. I see the message printed on stderr (on the terminal). Is there a way to make Logger and capture_io to play nicely together?
I'm in a straight Ruby environment, not Ruby on Rails.

Answer 1

The magic is to use capture_subprocess_io
out, err = capture_subprocess_io do
do_stuff
end

Answer 2

MiniTest's #capture_io temporarily switches $stdout and $stderr for StringIO objects to capture output written to $stdout or $stderr. But Logger has its own reference to the original standard error stream, which it will write to happily. I think you can consider this a bug or at least a limitation of MiniTest's #capture_io.
In your case, you're creating the Logger inside the block to #capture_io with the argument STDERR. STDERR still points to the original standard error stream, which is why it doesn't work as expected.
Changing STDERR to $stderr (which at that points does point to a StringIO object) works around this problem, but only if the Logger is actually created in the #capture_io block, since outside that block it points to the original standard error stream.
class T
def do_something
log = Logger.new($stderr)
log.info("Here is an info message")
end
end

Answer 3

Documentation of capture_subprocess_io
Basically Leonard's example fleshed out and commented with working code and pointing to the docs.
Captures $stdout and $stderr into strings, using Tempfile to ensure that subprocess IO is captured as well.
out, err = capture_subprocess_io do
system "echo Some info" # echos to standard out
system "echo You did a bad thing 1>&2" # echos to standard error
end
assert_match %r%info%, out
assert_match %r%bad%, err
NOTE: This method is approximately 10x slower than #capture_io so only use it when you need to test the output of a subprocess.
See Documentation

Answer 4

This is an old question, but one way we do this is to mock out the logger with an expects. Something like
logger.expects(:info).with("Here is an info message")
This allows us to assert the code under test without changing how logger works out of the box.
As an example of capture_io, we have a logger implementation to allow us to pass in hashes and output them to json. When we test that implementation we use capture_io. This is possible because we initialize the logger implementation in our subject line with $stdout.
subject { CustomLogging.new(ActiveSupport::Logger.new($stdout)) }
in the test
it 'processes a string message' do
msg = "stuff"
out, err = capture_io do
subject.info(msg)
end
out.must_equal "#{msg}\n"
end

Answer 5

You need to provide a different StringIO object while initializing Logger.new to capture the output, rather than the usual: STDERR which actually points to the console.
I modified the above two files a bit and made into a single file so that you can copy and test easily:
require 'logger'
require 'minitest'
class T
def do_something(io = nil)
io ||= STDERR
log = Logger.new io
log.info("Here is an info message")
end
end
class TestT < Minitest::Test
def test_something
t = T.new
string_io = StringIO.new
t.do_something string_io
puts "Out: #{string_io.string}"
end
end
Minitest.autorun
Explanation:
Method do_something will function normally in all other code when used without the argument.
When a StringIO method is provided, it uses that instead of the typical STDERR thus enabling to capture output like into a file or in this case for testing.