Ruby on Rails

On 2 December 2010 16:08, Andrew M. Kasper <andrew.m.kasper@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> 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)."

I certainly won't argue with that.

>
> 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.

Agreed

>
>
>> > ...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?

Thanks for that, I see the principle. As I have said in other posts I
think in practice provided I create the records in an arbitrary order
that just checking that the test fails without the order clause in the
named scope, and then passes with it, that the probability of this not
being good enough is trivial.

Thanks again.

Colin

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