Rails - Jun 2006 - Best practices in test logging

Hi!

My test suites are growing rapidly. Sometimes it is really hard to find
meningful test output in long and bloated test.log.

Do you have any advices or best practices when it comes to logging in 
tests?

So far I have been using following policy:

1. Log test name in every test_* method

   I have a method that puts coloured test name in the log. The problem 
is that
   I have to invoke this method manually in each test method. And it 
looks quite
   ugly:

   def test_reject_duplicate_account_name_on_signup
     log_test_name("test_reject_duplicate_account_name_on_signup")
     ... # Rest of the test goes here

   How to make Test::Unit log test name automatically?

2. Log failures using logger

   A small replacement function for Test::Unit::Assertions::assert_block 
is
   enough to write ''Success'' or ''Failed:
...'' in test logs.

3. Log everything from within tests, nothing from application.

   I try to make application methods as short and clean as possible. And 
that
   means (almost) no logging in the application itself. Only some really
   uncommon/strange/error situations have logging statements.

4. Use log when necessary, remove when no longer needed

   All the introspection I do _when needed_ in tests. And that means 
removing
   logging statements from tests as soon as they are not needed - when 
test
   passes.

Do you have any thoughts or suggestions to improve my test environment?

I put my test_helper.rb here: http://textsnippets.com/posts/show/522

Regards,

--
?ukasz Piestrzeniewicz
Recce - Requirements management made simple
http://recce.com/signup
My blog: http://ragnarson.blogspot.com

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

> So far I have been using following policy:
>
> 1. Log test name in every test_* method
>
>    I have a method that puts coloured test name in the log. The  
> problem
> is that
>    I have to invoke this method manually in each test method. And it
> looks quite
>    ugly:
>
>    def test_reject_duplicate_account_name_on_signup
>     
log_test_name("test_reject_duplicate_account_name_on_signup")
>      ... # Rest of the test goes here
>
>    How to make Test::Unit log test name automatically?
You might try using caller(0) to retrieve the current method.  It''ll  
need a bit of formatting to strip out the stuff you don''t need, but  
that ought to be pretty easy.