2 KiB
Testing with RSpec
RSpec is a ruby gem that allows you to test your code base. This is great - every time you make a change, you can do some basic sanity checks to make sure you didn't break anything.
To test Metamaps, run
rspec
in the top level directory. It will automatically search the spec directory
for files called *_spec.rb, and run them as tests. When it's done testing, it
will print a report telling you how many tests failed. With luck, the number
will be 0.
Note that if your test database doesn't exist yet, you'll need to create it first:
RAILS_ENV=test rake db:create
At the time of writing, there are four directories in the spec folder. One,
support, is for helper functions. rails_helper.rb and spec_helper.rb are
also for helper functions.
factories is for a gem called factory-girl. This gem lets you
use the create and build functions to quickly create the simplest possible
valid version of a given model. For instance:
let(:map1) { create :map }
let(:ronald) { create :user, name: "Ronald" }
let(:map2) { create :map, user: ronald }
As you can see, you can also customize the factories. You can read the full
documentation at the link above or check the existing specs to see how it works.
It is worth reading through the factories to see how they are defined. If you
add a model to app/models, please also create a factory for it that defines
the minimum valid state for that model.
Finally, models and controllers have the actual spec files. Writing specs is
usually fairly simple but you do need to understand the syntax. You can read
more at rspec.info.
If you modify the metamaps codebase, please consider adding tests verifying that the added code works. This will help in a few ways:
- Unrelated changes in the future that break your code will be spotted earlier
- Your changes will be more easily understood, since the purpose will be described by the spec
Happy testing!