rspec users - Feb 2008 - Newbie question with rspec on rails

Hi, 

I''m just startingwith Rspec with the rails framework.

I have a question regarding contexts.

If I use a generator for a model, for example, user, I get a user_spec which
I can place rspec specs.

Should I be only having one file per model? What is the convention for
naming and creating specs when speccing out cross object behaviour?

Really appreciate your thoughts.

Also, can anybody recommend any good books or tutorials on Rspec?

Many thanks!
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On Feb 3, 2008 9:32 AM, herding <rick.walsh at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I''m just startingwith Rspec with the rails framework.
>
> I have a question regarding contexts.
>
> If I use a generator for a model, for example, user, I get a user_spec
which
> I can place rspec specs.
>
> Should I be only having one file per model? What is the convention for
> naming and creating specs when speccing out cross object behaviour?
>
> Really appreciate your thoughts.
>
> Also, can anybody recommend any good books or tutorials on Rspec?
>
> Many thanks!
You don''t necessarily have to have one spec file per model. 
It''s a
pretty convenient convention though (and I just noticed for the first
time in my life that convenient and convention have the same root).
You can do whatever you want to keep your specs organized, but I''ve
found that I don''t often need to use multiple files to spec the same
class.

As for tutorials, I''d recommend watching the peepcode vids.  They do a
great job of demonstrating the technical use of RSpec, though they''re
a bit light on the conceptual stuff.  For some info on why BDD kicks
TDD''s butt, I would check out

http://behaviour-driven.org/
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8135690990081075324
http://dannorth.net/tags/agile/bdd
http://blog.davidchelimsky.net/

Pat

> What is the convention for naming and creating specs when speccing out
cross object behaviour?
I missed this.  For stuff like mixins, I''ll generally stick the module
definition under lib/ and have a corresponding spec under spec/lib.
Also I usually write the spec like

module NameableSpec
  class Person
    include Nameable
  end

  describe Nameable do
    before(:each) do
      @person = Person.new
      @person.set_name "Pat Maddox"
    end

    it "should parse the first name" do
      @person.first_name.should == "Pat"
    end

    it "should parse the last name" do
      @person.last_name.should == "Maddox"
    end
  end
end

The reason that I do that is because in order to write a spec for this
module, I have to actually mix it into a class.  I wrap the whole spec
in a module so that my test class name doesn''t clash with any existing
class names.

Another way to do it is to define the class dynamically before each test:

describe Nameable do
  before(:each) do
    klass = Class.new { include Nameable }
    @person = klass.new
    @person.set_name "Pat Maddox"
  end

  it "should parse the first name" do
    @person.first_name.should == "Pat"
  end

  it "should parse the last name" do
    @person.last_name.should == "Maddox"
  end
end

The upside to that is that you don''t have the ugly wrapper module.
The downside is that you can''t easily reuse the class between describe
blocks - you''d still want to have a wrapper module to avoid polluting
the namespace.  I tend to prefer this dynamic class creation, because
it''s usually less code.  I also end up with a bunch of little,
temporary helper classes that have only the behavior I want, rather
than a bigger test helper class with behavior to support multiple
specs.

I''m curious how other people handle this type of thing.

Pat