Ruby on Rails

On Dec 1, 3:55 pm, Colin Law <clan...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 1 December 2010 17:22, Andrew M. Kasper <andrew.m.kas...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I would argue that it's unimportant -- even at the unit-level -- *how*
> > the test is passing. If every time you run the test it passes, then
> > the code does what you specify it does. When there's a problem,
> > identify the bug and write a new unit, integration, or functional test
> > that eliminates the unexpected behavior, then make that test pass.
>
> I think effectively what you
> are saying is that it doesn't matter if it actually tests what it is
> supposed to as long as it passes.  If you later discover that the app
> is not doing what it is supposed to then add more tests.

A good point. I would summarize it more like this:
"If you verify, to the best of your ability, that the software behaves
the way you want it to, then you're finished testing until you
discover an exception. When you have a repeatable case where the
software does not behave the way you expect, at that point you will
have steps to cause the unexpected behavior (and therefore a test)."

It's not *only* the case that the test needs to pass; as you
mentioned, it is also the case that the test needs to verify behavior.
Sounds like we definitely agree on that. And you're right; it's that
"to the best of your ability" that's tricky. Seems like that's where
we went down different paths.

> > ...it's up to ActiveRecord to
> > hold up its end of the bargain.
>
> I am not trying to test that ActiveRecord sorts correctly, I am trying
> to test that I have correctly coded the scope.  I don't know how I
> would assert that the named scope is passing the correct sorting
> params.  Can you enlighten me?

I would probably do something like this in RSpec:

require 'spec_helper'
describe ClassWithNamedScope do
describe 'scope :foo' do
it 'exists' do
ClassWithNamedScope.scopes.should be_include(:foo)
end

it 'specifies that foo is true' do
ClassWithNamedScope.stub(:named_scope)

ClassWithNamedScope.should_receive(:named_scope).with(:active, :conditions
=> {:foo => true})
load "#{RAILS_ROOT}/app/models/class_with_named_scope.rb"
end
end
end

Similar stubbing and reloading should also work in test_unit with
Mocha or somesuch, right?

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