rspec users - Nov 2007 - Using RSpec to drive the design of a GUI desktop application

Hello everybody,
I''ve been using RSpec as a tool to create web applications for some
time
now, in Rails, and using plain Ruby with WEBrick as well. The tool suits my
needs and the story runner is great.
Now there are things that aren''t solvable on the web, you''ll
need a _real_
desktop application for those problems.

So I''ve toyed a bit around with various GUI libraries as wxRuby and
RubyCocoa, to get a feeling on how these libraries work and I love to create
native OS X applications using cocoa.
Of course, the next question that arose in my head was:"How do I drive the
design of an application using a BDD framework like RSpec?".

When writing a web application, it is relatively easy to simulate a HTTP
request to the app and crawl through the returned HTML, but for a desktop
application it''s different, right?
The format (html) handled between the application, and the toolkit drawing
the actual screen isn''t that open for a desktop application as it is
for a
web application.

So, since we don''t want to test the inner workings of the gui toolkit
and we
only want to specify the behaviour of the code we write self, we must plug a
framework somewhere, to capture the actual calls to this toolkit to know if
our code is doing the right thing. At least, that''s how I see it
currently.
But how could that be done?


Regards,

Matthijs Langenberg
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Matthijs Langenberg wrote:
> Hello everybody,
> 
> I''ve been using RSpec as a tool to create web applications for
some time
> now, in Rails, and using plain Ruby with WEBrick as well. The tool suits 
> my needs and the story runner is great.
> Now there are things that aren''t solvable on the web,
you''ll need a
> _real_ desktop application for those problems. 
Well ... given a large enough monitor and a minimal set of toolbars and 
menus on your browser, I''m not convinced there''s much of a
difference
between a "desktop" application and a "web" application from
the point
of view of a user sitting at a KVM portal. Of course, there is over a 
decade of convergence between the two user interfaces, so that''s not a 
great surprise. What do you think you couldn''t do with a browser and a 
web application framework/database running on the same machine as the 
browser and contacted via "localhost"?

Well that''s just cumbersome, and actually not the point of my
discussion. I
rather discuss about the ways we could use RSpec to create an application
based on RubyCocoa (for example), instead of discussing about what types of
software can''t work on the web, alright?

On Nov 17, 2007 10:51 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb at cesmail.net>
wrote:
> Matthijs Langenberg wrote:
> > Hello everybody,
> >
> > I''ve been using RSpec as a tool to create web applications
for some time
> > now, in Rails, and using plain Ruby with WEBrick as well. The tool
suits
> > my needs and the story runner is great.
> > Now there are things that aren''t solvable on the web,
you''ll need a
> > _real_ desktop application for those problems.
>
> Well ... given a large enough monitor and a minimal set of toolbars and
> menus on your browser, I''m not convinced there''s much of
a difference
> between a "desktop" application and a "web" application
from the point
> of view of a user sitting at a KVM portal. Of course, there is over a
> decade of convergence between the two user interfaces, so that''s
not a
> great surprise. What do you think you couldn''t do with a browser
and a
> web application framework/database running on the same machine as the
> browser and contacted via "localhost"?
>
> _______________________________________________
> rspec-users mailing list
> rspec-users at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users
>
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Hey Mathijs,

Someone pinged me that you were interested in BDD with RubyCocoa (RC),
so I thought I''d just chip in.

I write my RC apps in a BDD way and as such support for it is included  
with Rucola.
When we release 0.0.2 I will also release a screencast on how I use  
BDD with RC.

But the bottom-line is, like with so many other BDD code, to make  
extensive use of mocking.
Because most of the times you don''t want to test IF a NSTextField
works,
you just want to test the behaviour of your code IF a text field  
returns a specific value.
This is easily done with mocking.

Atm I don''t use rSpec but rather test/spec.
So there are probably some hurdles to overcome if you really wish to  
use rSpec.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Eloy Duran

==============================================================Hello everybody,
I''ve been using RSpec as a tool to create web applications for some
time
now, in Rails, and using plain Ruby with WEBrick as well. The tool  
suits my
needs and the story runner is great.
Now there are things that aren''t solvable on the web, you''ll
need a
_real_
desktop application for those problems.

So I''ve toyed a bit around with various GUI libraries as wxRuby and
RubyCocoa, to get a feeling on how these libraries work and I love to  
create
native OS X applications using cocoa.
Of course, the next question that arose in my head was:"How do I drive  
the
design of an application using a BDD framework like RSpec?".

When writing a web application, it is relatively easy to simulate a HTTP
request to the app and crawl through the returned HTML, but for a  
desktop
application it''s different, right?
The format (html) handled between the application, and the toolkit  
drawing
the actual screen isn''t that open for a desktop application as it is  
for a
web application.

So, since we don''t want to test the inner workings of the gui toolkit  
and we
only want to specify the behaviour of the code we write self, we must  
plug a
framework somewhere, to capture the actual calls to this toolkit to  
know if
our code is doing the right thing. At least, that''s how I see it  
currently.
But how could that be done?


Regards,

Matthijs Langenberg

On Nov 18, 2007 6:36 AM, Eloy Duran <eloy.de.enige at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Atm I don''t use rSpec but rather test/spec.
> So there are probably some hurdles to overcome if you really wish to
> use rSpec.
What hurdles would you anticipate?

On 18 Nov 2007, at 14:56, David Chelimsky wrote:
> On Nov 18, 2007 6:36 AM, Eloy Duran <eloy.de.enige at gmail.com>
wrote:
>> Atm I don''t use rSpec but rather test/spec.
>> So there are probably some hurdles to overcome if you really wish to
>> use rSpec.
>
> What hurdles would you anticipate?
I don''t think there are any insurmountable ones, we just need to make  
sure rucola is testing framework agnostic like merb. I''m going to have
a go at integrating rspec tests later this evening as I want to use  
rspec with rubycocoa.

Cheers,

Chris

On Nov 18, 2007 9:45 AM, Chris McGrath <chris at octopod.info>
wrote:
>
>
> On 18 Nov 2007, at 14:56, David Chelimsky wrote:
>
> > On Nov 18, 2007 6:36 AM, Eloy Duran <eloy.de.enige at gmail.com>
wrote:
> >> Atm I don''t use rSpec but rather test/spec.
> >> So there are probably some hurdles to overcome if you really wish
to
> >> use rSpec.
> >
> > What hurdles would you anticipate?
>
> I don''t think there are any insurmountable ones, we just need to
make
> sure rucola is testing framework agnostic like merb. I''m going to
have
> a go at integrating rspec tests later this evening as I want to use
> rspec with rubycocoa.
Great! If you find anything that needs to change in rspec, please let
us know. Obviously, patches are preferred as we''ve got a lot on our
plates these days, but a bug report or feature request would be just
as useful.

Cheers,
David
>
> Cheers,
>
> Chris
>
> _______________________________________________
> rspec-users mailing list
> rspec-users at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users
>

Yes sorry I meant that rucola isn''t fine tuned for rspec yet. :)

But apperantly Chris is going to work on this.

Eloy

On 18-nov-2007, at 16:45, Chris McGrath <chris at octopod.info> wrote:
>
> On 18 Nov 2007, at 14:56, David Chelimsky wrote:
>
>> On Nov 18, 2007 6:36 AM, Eloy Duran <eloy.de.enige at gmail.com>
wrote:
>>> Atm I don''t use rSpec but rather test/spec.
>>> So there are probably some hurdles to overcome if you really wish
to
>>> use rSpec.
>>
>> What hurdles would you anticipate?
>
> I don''t think there are any insurmountable ones, we just need to
make
> sure rucola is testing framework agnostic like merb. I''m going to
have
> a go at integrating rspec tests later this evening as I want to use
> rspec with rubycocoa.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Chris
> _______________________________________________
> rspec-users mailing list
> rspec-users at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users