I just came across this cool tip from Tom Preston-Werner of rubyisawesome.com. Basically, if you end a mysql commandline query with \G instead of a semicolon, you’ll get a nicely formatted query that is suitable for pasting into a YAML file.

But what if you are not using mysql? We have a project with postgres. There’s probably a psql command to do something similar, but there is also a database agnostic way: Just use the rails console! :)

>> puts User.find(:all).to_yaml
---
- !ruby/object:User 
  attributes: 
    status: unverified
    salt: L52b2pxGCL
    can_invite: "0" 
    hashed_password: L50/yIQjPCBiU
    is_admin: "0" 
    id: "478674008" 
    first_name: Mickey
    last_name: Mouse
    watchlist_by_email: "0" 
    created_at: 2008-01-30 15:34:26
    email: mickey@mouse.com

		
		
	

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  - should not be published publicly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    should_eventually "not be published publicly" do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.