On Thursday I gave a talk about Bug fighting with TDD and how it will help you to write better software at the Ruby User Group in Berlin. Sorry, I won’t put the slides online, although people asked about it. I think they are a pretty useless collection of keywords and pictures without the talking. Instead I like to provide a collection of links to dive into the whole testing matters.

First a collection of tools you can choose from for various testing scenarios. They all have their pros and cons, it just comes down to which will do the job best for you.

Tools for Unit Testing

• Rspec
• Test/Unit (part of Rails)
• shoulda

Tools for Mocking

• Flexmock
• Mocha
• RR

Tools for Acceptance Testing

• Webrat
• Cucumber
• HtmlUnit (with JRuby)
• Selenium

Tools to generate test objects

• Machinist
• FactoryGirl
• ObjectDaddy

Misc tools

• Autotest
• Tarantula
• Culerity

To save you the initial searching where to start, I collected some links where you find basic information about testing in general or with certain tools.

Getting started

• A Guide to Testing Rails Applications
• An introduction to RSpec
• Functional Testing awesomeness with Webrat
• How I Test Controllers, 2009 Remix
• Shoulda tutorial
• Mock objects explained and intro to Mocha (de)

For everyone who wants to get more into the subject, I drilled down my feed reader to collect some interesting blog posts on testing matters.

Opinions and In-sign

• The Great Test Framework Dance-off
• Thoughts on Developer Testing
• Spikes, test-after, and learning how to test
• A case against a case against mocking and stubbing
• A critical look at the current state of Ruby testing
• One Line Tests Without the Smells
• Mocks Aren’t Stubs
• Testing as Communication: Real-World Techniques Notes
• When duplication in tests informs design
• Writing Code That Doesn’t Suck (vid)

So much for my two cents to make the software world better.

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Hier wie versprochen die Slides meiner Presentation zum Thema mocha bei der Ruby User Group Berlin.

Links:

Mocha
Floehopper (Blog des Mocha Entwicklers)
Presentation about Ruby Mocks
TestingRails Blog (gelöscht )
Use stubs and mocks to convey intent
Ruby: Mocks and Stubs using Mocha

For aprox. 3 months we have been using mocha now. And we promised to get back to this subject when we passed our 2000th revision.

In this post I’d like to share some expirence we made while using mocha. But first a short introduction to mocha taken from the rubyforge page.

Mocha is a library for mocking and stubbing using a syntax like that of JMock, and SchMock. One of its main advantages is that it allows you to mock and stub methods on real (non-mock) classes and instances.

We started to use mocha on an existing test suite and changed our test code in place when we wrote a new test or had to update old ones. The transition was mostly painless, there were three things where we stumbled.
(more…)

Da unsere vielen Tests mittlerweile ein wenig lange brauchen, haben wir uns am heutigen Forschungstag mal wieder mit dem Problem Testing auseinandergesetzt. Das Ergebniss diesmal schon vorne weg: unsere erfolgreichste Entdeckung ist Mocha.
Mit diesem Framework lassen sich Stubs und Mocks mit realen Objekten verwenden. Es folgt ein kleiner Auszug aus unserem bisherigen Testcode.

def create_activated_user(attributes = {})
email = generate_email_address
User.create!({:gender => ‘m’, :first_name => ‘joe’, :last_name => ‘doe’, :email => email,
:password => ‘test’, :password_confirmation => ‘test’, :city => “berlin”, :status => ‘active’
}.merge(attributes))
end

def create_auto(user = nil, attributes = {})
user = create_user unless user
Auto.create!(auto_hash(user).merge(attributes))
end

def test_activity_returns35_for_user_with_picture_and_auto_with_picture
user = create_activated_user :photo => ‘1.gif’
create_auto user, :photo => ‘2.gif’
assert_equal(35, user.activity)
end

Dauer: 795ms

Nach kurzem Studium des Mocha Cheat Sheets haben wir dann den Test wie folgt geändert.

def test_activity_return35_for_user_with_picture_and_auto_with_picture
with_photos = stub :with_photos => [Auto.new(:photo =>'test.gif')]
user = User.new :photo => ‘1.gif’
user.stubs(:autos).returns(with_photos)
assert_equal(35, user.activity)
end

Dauer: 49ms

Na wenn das keine signifikate Verbesserung ist. Auf Mocha gestoßen sind wir über den Testing Rails Blog, auf dem leider nichts Neues mehr zu passieren scheint. Eine kleine Übersicht von Stub-Frameworks mit problemspezifischen Einschätzungen fanden wir auf dem Blog von Jay Fields.

Wir werden Mocha in der nächsten Zeit in unseren Test integrieren, und bei der 2000ten Revision sagen wir euch wie lange unsere Test Suite läuft.