Rails /lib module testing

Testing RSpec
1

I’ve seen several posts related, but not touching on what I’m
wondering…

I have a lib module that I’d like to do ‘white-box’ testing - similar
to a Rails mvc. But I can’t see how to get a handle on the internal
instance vars in the method.

here are some code snippets that probably best explain my situation…

#########################################################
require File.expand_path(File.dirname(FILE) + ‘/…/spec_helper’)

describe AasmCrawler do

context “create_message method” do
it “should create a new Link message” do
@link.should == Link.new
end
end
end
#########################################################
module AasmCrawler
def create_message
@link = Link.new
end
end
#########################################################

I’ve tried “assigns[:link]” but “assigns” is not known.

I’ve also seen comments to test this via a model where it is included

  • but that seems like WET testing, if this is used repeatedly why not
    test it once at the source?

thanks for any help

2

That’s because assigns only works in a Rails functional test.

If you’re the author of the module, you could add a self.included block
that then sets up an attr_reader :link, like so:

def self.included(base)
base.class_eval do
attr_reader :link
end
end

Then, all you have to say is @link.link.should == Link.new.

Otherwise, you can access the instance variable within @link using
instance_variable_get. So @link.instance_variable_get("@link").should ==
Link.new.

– Elliot