Testing url_for

Testing RSpec
1

Hi David, I’m giving a try to RSpec after we meet each other on Rails
Summit Latin America and I must admit I’m enjoying using
rspec/machinist/faker.

Since I have not written any controllers yet, I hadn’t taken a chance to
try webrat.

But there is a situation that I would like some feedback on how to deal
with it.

When registering new users, they will input their e-mail and a message
will be sent for them to confirm their addresses and continue
registering.

I use something like:

MailNotifier.deliver_email_confirmation_message :confirmation_url =>
url_for(:controllers => ‘users’, :action => ‘continue_register’, :user
=> @user.id, :token => @user.confirmation_token)

And the routes are set to ‘:controller/:action’, so that the url would
translate to
‘/users/continue_register?user=2&confirmation_token=asdf987asf’.

The problem is that Ruby 1.8 will not maintain any specific order for
the parameters. (The application is hosted in a shared server at
hostingrails.com, which hosts Ruby 1.8)

I know that I could add a route to generate
‘/users/continue_register/2/asdf987asf’ instead, but I would still like
to know what would be the alternatives.

How could I verify that the delivered message contains a correct url? I
know that I should follow the url in an acceptance test, but I’m just
trying to test that the message is been correct generated, in a unit
test.

Please, let me know if I missed something conceptually while testing
this situation.

Thanks for RSpec and the tips about machinist, faker and webrat.

Just one more doubt. When using machinist, is it possible to ignore the
blueprint while calling ‘make’ on an ActiveRecord class? I had to create
a named blueprint reseting all fields set by the blueprint.

It was nice to meet you.

Best Regards,

Rodrigo.

2

On Oct 27, 2009, at 8:21 AM, Rodrigo Rosenfeld R. wrote:

When registering new users, they will input their e-mail and a
And the routes are set to ‘:controller/:action’, so that the url
would translate to ‘/users/continue_register?
user=2&confirmation_token=asdf987asf’.

The problem is that Ruby 1.8 will not maintain any specific order
for the parameters. (The application is hosted in a shared server at hostingrails.com
, which hosts Ruby 1.8)

I know that I could add a route to generate ‘/users/
continue_register/2/asdf987asf’ instead, but I would still like to
know what would be the alternatives.

Oi Rodrigo,

There’s no great alternative that I know of. I’ve always just grabbed
the URL using a regexp and then broken it up. Something like this:

text.should =~ /http://test.host/users/continue_register?([^\s]*)/
query_string = $1
query_string.should =~ /user=2/
query_string.should =~ /confirmation_token=asdf987asf/

You could also use Rack::Utils.parse_query to convert the query_string
to hash, or capture the entire url and use the route_to matcher:

text.should =~ /(http://test.host/users/continue_register?[^\s]*)/
{:get => $1}.should route_to(
:controllers => ‘users’,
:action => ‘continue_register’,
:user => @user.id,
:token => @user.confirmation_token
)

I don’t love either of those - I’d sooner change the implementation to
something deterministic, but that’s me :slight_smile:

Just one more doubt. When using machinist, is it possible to ignore
the blueprint while calling ‘make’ on an ActiveRecord class? I had
to create a named blueprint reseting all fields set by the blueprint.

I don’t know of a way of to do this, but why do you need to? You may
want to look at a couple of other libraries like Fixjour, Fixture
Replacement and Factory Girl - they serve the same function as
Machinist, but don’t (afaik) add methods to ActiveRecord::Base.

It was nice to meet you.

O prazer foi meu.

Tchau,
David

3

Em 27-10-2009 15:17, David C. escreveu:

deal with it.

like to know what would be the alternatives.

I don’t love either of those - I’d sooner change the implementation to
something deterministic, but that’s me :slight_smile:

David, thank you very much for your feedback, although not ideal they
are good approaches.

I understand your point of view in changing to something deterministic
and I was thinking in doing that, at first. But I would like to know if
there was a gotcha that I couldn’t figure it out. I need to choose
between clean code in the implementation or in the test…

Using a deterministic approach would make the test clearer, while using
url_for with Ruby 1.8 would make the implementation clearer… That is
why I was thinking in creating a route to achieve both, but it would
exist only to make both clearer and could cause some confusion while
reading routes.rb…

The first approach you presented is clearer, but wouldn’t detect a
problem that I noticed when testing my mailer. I was using RedCloth’s
textilize, thinking that it would generate a link (which actually
auto_link does) and I was testing if the link was contained in the body.
The first approach wouldn’t detect that the url was wrong, like
“?user=1&token=abc”.

The second approach goes against Ruby way, in my opinion… :slight_smile: Too many
code to test a single statement…

Another approach would be something like:

Regexp.new(‘http://test.host/users/continue_register\?‘+([’([^\s]+)‘]*2).join(’\&’)).
match(email.body).to_a[1…-1].to_set.should ==
[“user=#{@user.id}”, “token=#{@user.activation_token}”].to_set

where the first line could be replaced, in this case, with:
Regexp.new(‘http://test.host/users/continue_register\?([^\s]+)\&([^\s]+)’).

although I would prefer another matcher to exist:
match(email.body).to_a[1…-1].should
have_same_elements([“user=#{@user.id}”,
“token=#{@user.activation_token}”])

But the problem with this approach is that I would probably need to
write another test for testing this test :wink:

Thanks for RSpec and the tips about machinist, faker and webrat.

Just one more doubt. When using machinist, is it possible to ignore
the blueprint while calling ‘make’ on an ActiveRecord class? I had to
create a named blueprint reseting all fields set by the blueprint.

I don’t know of a way of to do this, but why do you need to?

Usually, for most tests, I need to create active users.

Only for testing the registering process, I need another structure.

Active users must have login, name, email and password.

Inactive users would only have email.

You may want to look at a couple of other libraries like Fixjour,
Fixture Replacement and Factory Girl - they serve the same function as
Machinist, but don’t (afaik) add methods to ActiveRecord::Base.

Actually, I’ve taken a look at Factory Girl, but prefered Machinist,
which is awesome. I’ll take a look at Fixjour and Fixture Replacement.
Do they have a blueprint-like feature?

I have no problem in creating methods in ActiveRecord::Base. I just
wanted to call something like:

User.make_without_blueprint(:email => ‘[email protected]’, :active =>
‘false’)

Thank you for your feedback,

Rodrigo.

4

Em 28-10-2009 00:21, David C. escreveu:

‘false’)

How about make_inactive and put it directly on User?

Also, there may be some sort of named blueprint feature. I’m not in a
position to look that up right now, but I think I remember that being
supported. If not, we should make it so :slight_smile:

Thank you for making me going back to my first try. It is a long story:

The first thing I tried out was:

User.create(:active => false, :email => ‘[email protected]’)

At that time it didn’t work because the user was being persisted and the
next time I was running the test it gived me an error because of
duplicate e-mail.

I associated that User.make would act diferently, turning on the
rollback, but actually I figured out later that the problem was that I
was calling it from before(:all). When I changed to before(:each) I had
already created a named blueprint that reset the other fields generated
by the default blueprint.

After reading your message, I came back to my original try and guess
what: It works! :slight_smile:

The problem was the before(:all) that I tried at the beggining…

Thank you once more,

Rodrigo.

5

On Oct 27, 2009, at 6:48 PM, Rodrigo Rosenfeld R.
<[email protected]

wrote:

But there is a situation that I would like some feedback on how to
‘continue_register’, :user => @user.id, :token =>
I know that I could add a route to generate '/users/
\s]*)/
{:get => $1}.should route_to(
they are good approaches.
it would exist only to make both clearer and could cause some
many code to test a single statement…
).

Just one more doubt. When using machinist, is it possible to
Active users must have login, name, email and password.

I have no problem in creating methods in ActiveRecord::Base. I just
wanted to call something like:

User.make_without_blueprint(:email => ‘[email protected]’, :active =>
‘false’)

How about make_inactive and put it directly on User?

Also, there may be some sort of named blueprint feature. I’m not in a
position to look that up right now, but I think I remember that being
supported. If not, we should make it so :slight_smile: