Recently I’ve been refactoring legacy Test::Unit code to use shoulda. Sometimes you can’t factor out repetitive stuff into a context, but you still want to be DRY. Below is an example case of refactoring into a custom should. Note that you need to use class variables, and that the self.should_* method needs to be defined before it’s actually used, since shoulda is built upon metaprogramming which gets evaluated at the class level.

...

  def self.should_request sym
    sym = sym.to_s
    context "when requesting #{sym}" do
      setup do
        get :download, {:id => @@podcast.id, :type => sym}, @@session
      end
      should "ask for a device" do
         assert_match /Please select a device to download content/,  @response.body
      end
      should "increment the message count when sent #add_to_device" do
        assert_difference 'Message.count( :conditions => "device_id = 1")', @@podcast.episodes.size do
          xhr :post, :add_to_device, {:id => 1, :type => 'all', :podcast_id => @@podcast.id}, @@session
        end
      end
    end
  end

  context "A valid account" do
    setup do
      @account = accounts(:accounts_002)
      @@session = {:account_id => @account.id}
      @account.devices << Device.find(1)
      @@podcast = podcasts(:joe_cartoon)
      @@session.merge!({:podcast_episodes => @@podcast.episodes})
    end

    should_request :all
    should_request :latest
    should_request :episode
  end

...

We hosted the SF Ruby Meetup last night, which was a smashing success. It was fun to have 50+ Ruby geeks crammed into our office. :)

Here are the slides from my presentation about Shoulda.

I’m pleased to announce a textmate bundle that I assembled for the wonderfully simple shoulda testing framework.

The snippets were contributed by Dan Croak, James Golick, and Sam Livingston-Gray, and mashed up by me.

Grab the latest version here: http://macromates.com/svn/Bundles/trunk/Review/Bundles/Ruby%20Shoulda.tmbundle

Inspired by err’s cryptic yaml_to_spec rake task, I wrote my own version for shoulda, based off of Jeremy Hubert’s textmate bundle It’s a bit less cryptic, and it for extra nerd points it uses recursion to allow for nested contexts. :)

desc "Converts a YAML file into a Shoulda skeleton" 
task :yaml_to_shoulda do
  require 'yaml'

  def yaml_to_context hash, indent=0
    indent1 = '  '*indent
    indent2 = '  '*(indent+1)
    hash.each_pair do |context,shoulds|
      puts indent1+"context \"#{context}\" do" 
      puts    
      shoulds.each do |should|
        yaml_to_context( should, indent+1 ) and next if should.is_a?( Hash )
        puts indent2+"should_eventually \"#{should.gsub(/^should +/,'')}\" do" 
        puts indent2+"end" 
        puts
      end
    puts indent1+"end" 
  end 

  yaml_to_context( YAML.load_file( ENV['FILE'] || !puts("Pass in FILE argument.") && exit ) )
end

This blog post:
- should mention shoulda
- should be concise
- should be written by me
- when saved as a draft:
  - should have multiple revisions
  - should not be published publicly



context "This blog post" do

  should_eventually "mention shoulda" do
  end

  should_eventually "be concise" do
  end

  should_eventually "be written by me" do
  end

  context "when saved as a draft" do

    should_eventually "have multiple revisions" do
    end

    should_eventually "not be published publicly" do
    end

  end
end

I will be adding this to my shoulda textmate bundle.

This morning I just discovered Shoulda, a really sweet testing framework that gives context and behavior without the whizz-bang syntax of RSpec and test-spec. Check it out!

My only complaints so far:

• the example code on their homepage is missing “do” keywords after some of the “should” statements. oops!

• I can no longer run an individual test in textmate with APPLE-shift-R, as there is no literal method to run, just a block. Hopefully this will be fixed with a forthcoming shoulda textmate bundle.