[rspec-users] Isolating rails model specs from their implementation

David Chelimsky
2007-07-29T20:21:18Z

On 7/29/07, Russell Tracey <russell.tracey at gmail.com>
wrote:
> I''m currently taking a Rails project management app I built when
> learning Rails and adding specs to it. During the course of building
> the app the requirement that project should be archiveable was added.
> So a project is in one of two states active or archived.
>
> This led to the creation of the following methods:
>
> Project.active_projects
> Project.archived_projects
>
> @project.active?
> @project.archived?
> @project.archive!
> @project.unarchive!
>
> The current implementation of this is using a separate table of
> "visibilities" as follows:
>
> # Implementation 1 (Current)
>
> Tables:
>
>   Project
>     id name           visibility_status_id
>     1  ActiveProject                        1
>     1  ArchivedProject                     2
>
>   VisibilityStatuses
>     id name
>     1  Live
>     2  Archived
>
> But the same behavior could be implemented using a datetime column as
follows:
>
> # Implementation 2
>
> Tables:
>
>   Project
>     id name            archived_at
>     1  ActiveProject   null
>     1  ArchivedProject 2007-07-29:18:57
>
> Or in fact numerous other ways e.g.
>
> # Implementation 3
>
> Army of cows:
>
> Each cow represents a project, the cows wear one of two hats
> to indicate the active/archived status of the project they represent.
>
> ...and so on.
>
> It''s my understanding that model specs (and specs in general)
should
> be shielded from the implementation details, so how do i check that
> Project.active_projects only returns active projects without looking
> at assuming something about the implementation? My initial thought is
> to check each of them using one of the other exposed methods above, in
> this case...
>
>   Project.active_projects.all? {|p| p.active? }
>
> but then i can''t work out how to spec all the other methods
without
> going round in circles so that each spec would end up assuming that
> the other methods work (in this case that p.active? is working) or
> worse resorting to peeking at implementation details.

Keep in mind that back-filling examples to existing code is a very
different process from writing the examples first, which is the
situation for which RSpec is intended. In that case, you might start
with one example like this:

describe Project do
  it " should not be active by default" do
    project = Project.create
    project.should_not be_active
  end
end

Then the next example might be that when you activate it should be active:

describe Project do
  it " should not be active by default" { ... }

  it "should be active after you activate it" do
    project = Project.create
    project.activate!
    project.should be_active
  end

  it "should show up in the list of active projects when activated" do
    project = Project.create
    project.activate!
    Project.active_projects.should include(project)
  end
end

etc.

In this second pair of examples, we never "test" the activate! method
in terms of looking at its internal effects (i.e. that it changes
something in the database), but rather through the difference in the
way the object behaves after having called the activate! method.

Make sense?

David