I have a command line (NON-RAILS) application written in pure Ruby that I'm driving out through Cucumber and RSpec. It follows the typical application hierarchy of lib, bin, spec, and feature directories.
Up until now, I've followed the traditional process of writing a failing Cucumber feature/scenario, dropping down to RSpec to drive out the supporting lib files, then getting the scenario to pass.
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be as straight forward when driving out the main application entry point in "bin/my_application.rb". The main issue for me is that I'm not describing a class in RSpec, it's a sequential Ruby script for managing the application's classes and initialization via command line parameters and options.
"bin/my_application.rb" is just a small shell-executed wrapper for parsing command line options and passing them onto my main application class as initializer options. I'd still like to test the behavior of the bin script (e.g. MyApp.should_receive(option_a).with(parameter)).
Any suggestions/thoughts/advice? Is this a normal test strategy for driving out command line Ruby script behavior?
Thanks in advance.
Not sure I fully comprehend what you're asking, but I'd say that if you want to use RSpec to test your parameter passing it should be easy enough to do. Say you have your wrapper script:
# my_application.rb
command = Command.new
command.foo = true if ARGV[0]
command.bar = true if ARGV[1]
command.baz = false if ARGV[2]
command.make_dollars(1000000)
Just mix it up and make it a class suitable for testing.
# command_runner.rb
class CommandRunner
def run(args, command = Command.new)
command.foo = true if args[0]
command.bar = true if args[1]
command.baz = false if args[2]
command.make_dollars(1000000)
end
end
# my_application.rb
CommandRunner.new.run(ARGV)
Now the only thing you don't have tested is your default parameter on the run command and the one line in the file my_application.rb
Hope that helps.
Brandon
Related
I have to maintain a Ruby script, which requires some libs I don't have locally and which won't work in my environment. Nevertheless I want to spec some methods in this script so that I can change them easily.
Is there an option to stub some of the require statements in the script I want to test so that it can be loaded by rspec and the spec can be executed within my environment?
Example (old_script.rb):
require "incompatible_lib"
class Script
def some_other_stuff
...
end
def add(a,b)
a+b
end
end
How can I write a test to check the add function without splitting the "old_Script.rb" file and without providing the incompatible_lib I don't have?
Instead of stubbing require which is "inherited" from Kernel, you could do this:
Create a dummy incompatible_lib.rb file somewhere that is not in your $LOAD_PATH. I.e., if this is a Ruby application (not Rails), don't put it in lib/ nor spec/.
You can do this a number of ways, but I'll tell you one method: in your spec file which tests Script, modify $LOAD_PATH to include the parent directory of your dummy incompatible_lib.rb.
Ordering is very important -- next you will include script.rb (the file which defines Script).
This will get you around the issue and allow you test test the add method.
Once you've successfully tested Script, I would highly recommend refactoring it so that you don't have to do this technique, which is a hack, IMHO.
Thanks, I also thought about the option of adding the files, but finally hacked the require itself within the test case:
module Kernel
alias :old_require :require
def require(path)
old_require(path) unless LIBS_TO_SKIP.include?(path)
end
end
I know that this is an ugly hack but as this is legacy code executed on a modified ruby compiler I can't easily get these libs running and it's sufficient to let me test my modifications...
I'm some rspec tests for a command line ruby based application. I'm trying to build my test suite allow for testing of missing command line parameters. Specifically, I'd like to stub out what ARGV[0]..ARGV[N] would appear to the application. I've seen similar posts mention ENV.stub; however, I don't see how I can simulate "nameless" args and a given order.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
I simply did this in my test case located in spec:
it "does something" do
arg = "/tmp"
exe = File.expand_path('../bin/site_checker', File.dirname(__FILE__))
stdin, stdout, stderr = Open3.popen3("#{exe} -Ilib #{arg}")
stdout.readlines.should be_empty
end
I am creating a Rubygem that will let me generate jekyll post files. One of the reasons I am developing this project is to learn TDD. This gem is strictly functional on the command line, and it has to make a series of checks to make sure that it finds the _posts directory. This depends on two things:
Wether or not a location option was passed
Is that location option valid?
A location option was not passed
Is the posts dir in the current directory?
Is the posts dir the current working directory?
At that point, I am really having a hard time testing that part of the application. So I have two questions:
is it acceptable/okay to skip tests for small parts of the application like the one described above?
If not, how do you test file manipulation in ruby using minitest?
Some projects I've seen implement their command line tools as Command objects (for example: Rubygems and my linebreak gem). These objects are initialized with the ARGV simply have a call or execute method which then starts the whole process. This enables these projects to put their command line applications into a virtual environment. They could, for example hold the input and output stream objects in instance variables of the command object to make the application independant of using STDOUT/STDIN. And thus, making it possible to test the input/output of the command line application. In the same way I imagine, you could hold your current working directory in an instance variable to make your command line application independent of your real working directory. You could then create a temporary directory for each test and set this one as the working directory for your Command object.
And now some code:
require 'pathname'
class MyCommand
attr_accessor :input, :output, :error, :working_dir
def initialize(options = {})
#input = options[:input] ? options[:input] : STDIN
#output = options[:output] ? options[:output] : STDOUT
#error = options[:error] ? options[:error] : STDERR
#working_dir = options[:working_dir] ? Pathname.new(options[:working_dir]) : Pathname.pwd
end
# Override the puts method to use the specified output stream
def puts(output = nil)
#output.puts(output)
end
def execute(arguments = ARGV)
# Change to the given working directory
Dir.chdir(working_dir) do
# Analyze the arguments
if arguments[0] == '--readfile'
posts_dir = Pathname.new('posts')
my_file = posts_dir + 'myfile'
puts my_file.read
end
end
end
end
# Start the command without mockups if the ruby script is called directly
if __FILE__ == $PROGRAM_NAME
MyCommand.new.execute
end
Now in your test's setup and teardown methods you could do:
require 'pathname'
require 'tmpdir'
require 'stringio'
def setup
#working_dir = Pathname.new(Dir.mktmpdir('mycommand'))
#output = StringIO.new
#error = StringIO.new
#command = MyCommand.new(:working_dir => #working_dir, :output => #output, :error => #error)
end
def test_some_stuff
#command.execute(['--readfile'])
# ...
end
def teardown
#working_dir.rmtree
end
(In the example I'm using Pathname, which is a really nice object oriented file system API from Ruby's standard library and StringIO, which is useful for for mocking STDOUT as it's an IO object which streams into a simple String)
In the acutal test you could now use the #working_dir variable to test for existence or content of files:
path = #working_dir + 'posts' + 'myfile'
path.exist?
path.file?
path.directory?
path.read == "abc\n"
From my experience (and thus this is VERY subjective), I think it's ok sometimes to skip unit testing in some areas which are difficult to test. You need to find out what you get in return and the cost for testing or not. My rule of thumb is that the decision to not test a class should be very unusual (around less than 1 in 300 classes)
If what you're trying to test is very difficult, because of the dependencies with the file system, I think you could try to extract all the bits that interact with the file system.
Can I replace an executable (accessed via a system call from ruby) with an executable that expects certain input and supplies the expected output in a consistent amount of time? I'm mainly operating on Mac OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard), but I also have access to Linux and Windows. I'm using MRI ruby 1.8.7.
Background: I'm looking at doing several DNA sequence alignments, one in each thread. When I try using BioRuby for this, either BioRuby or ruby's standard library's tempfile sometimes raise exceptions (which is better than failing silently!).
I set up a test that reproduces the problem, but only some of the time. I assume the main sources of variability between tests are the threading, the tempfile system, and the executable used for alignment (ClustalW). Since ClustalW probably isn't malfunctioning, but can be a source of variability, I'm thinking that eliminating it may aid reproducibility.
For those thinking select isn't broken - that's what I'm wondering too. However, according to the changelog, there was concern about tempfile's thread safety in August 2009. Also, I've checked on the BioRuby mailing list whether I'm calling the BioRuby code correctly, and that seems to be the case.
I really don't understand what the problem is or what exactly are you after, can't you just write something like
#!/bin/sh
#Test for input (syntax might be wrong, but you get the idea)
if [ $* ne "expected input" ]; then
echo "expected output for failure"
exit -1
fi
#have it work in a consistent amount of time
$CONSISTENT_AMOUNT_OF_TIME = 20
sleep $CONSISTENT_AMOUNT_OF_TIME
echo "expected output"
You can. In cases where I'm writing a functional test for program A, I may need to "mock" a program, B, that A runs via system. What I do then is to make program B's pathname configurable, with a default:
class ProgramA
def initialize(argv)
#args = ParseArgs(argv)
#config = Config.new(#args.config_path || default_config_path)
end
def run
command = [
program_b_path,
'--verbose',
'--do_something_wonderful',
].join(' ')
system(command)
...
end
def program_a_path
#config.fetch('program_b_path', default_program_b_path)
end
end
Program A takes a switch, "--config PATH", which can override the default config file path. The test sets up a configuration file in /tmp:
program_b_path: /home/wayne/project/tests/mock_program_b.rb
And passes to program A that configuration file:
program_a.rb --config /tmp/config.yaml
Now program A will run not the real program B, but the mock one.
Have you tried the Mocha gem? It's used a lot for testing, and you describe it perfectly. It "fakes" the method call of an object (which includes just about anything in ruby), and returns the result you want without actually running the method. Take this example file:
# test.rb
require 'rubygems'
require 'mocha'
self.stubs(:system).with('ls').returns('monkey')
puts system('ls')
Running this script outputs "monkey" because I stubbed out the system call. You can use this to bypass parts of an application you don't want test, to factor out irrelevant parts.
[I'm just starting with Ruby, but "no question is ever too newbie," so I trudge onwards...]
Every tutorial and book I see goes from Ruby with the interactive shell to Ruby on Rails. I'm not doing Rails (yet), but I don't want to use the interactive shell. I have a class file (first_class.rb) and a Main (main.rb). If I run the main.rb, I of course get the uninitialized constant FirstClass. How do I tell ruby about the first_class.rb?
The easiest way is to put them both in the same file.
However you can also use require, e.g.:
require 'first_class'
You can also use autoload as follows:
autoload :FirstClass, 'first_class'
This code will automatically load first_class.rb as soon as FirstClass is used. Note, however, that the current implementations of autoload are not thread safe (see http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/174036).
There's another point worth noting: you wouldn't typically use a main file in ruby. If you're writing a command line tool, standard practice would be to place the tool in a bin subdirectory. For normal one-off scripts the main idiom is:
if __FILE__ == $0
# main does here
# `__FILE__` contains the name of the file the statement is contained in
# `$0` contains the name of the script called by the interpreter
#
# if the file was `required`, i.e. is being used as a library
# the code isn't executed.
# if the file is being passed as an argument to the interpreter, it is.
end