rspec users - Aug 2008 - Straw Poll: How are you using plain text stories (in rails)?

Hi all,

I''ve been using rspec / rails for just over a week now, and
I''m loving
the specification framework.  The way I can group examples together
feels really natural, and I''m finding the TDD flow terrific.

Thus far I''ve used the describe / it "should..." syntax to
basically do
TDD of my controllers, views and models, with splendid isolation using
the mocking framework. I''ve yet to write any ''integrations
tests'', in
fact I''m not yet clear how much value they have.

What originally attracted me to rspec was hearing Dan North talk about
the plain text stories, and I had some fun in my previous life as a C#
programmer using them to drive watir tests of an ASP.NET app.

What I''m not sure about is how they''re most appropriately used
in rails.

Are people generally using them, as I was in the .NET world, to drive
selenium/watir acceptance tests, or do they have value as replacements
to the rails ''integration tests''?

How about webrat? or some other glue / tool that I haven''t heard of
yet?

Just a quick answer from anyone out there using these tools would be
great in order to get a feel for the current state of the art, and some
fresh fuel for my googling!

Sorry if this post is a bit rambling... thanks for bearing with me as I
scramble up the learning curve!

cheers,
Matt
-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

> Are people generally using them, as I was in the .NET world, to drive
> selenium/watir acceptance tests, or do they have value as replacements
> to the rails ''integration tests''?
I''m using stories as acceptance tests and also replacing rails
integration tests. I find with stories I generally end up with good
coverage of all the things I would do for integration tests.
>
> How about webrat? or some other glue / tool that I haven''t heard
of yet?
>
Webrat''s great but you often have to turn to something that handles
JavaScript. I ended up using Selenium to handle this ?(Selenium-rc). I 
find in a big ajaxy web app, webrat accounts for about 10% of my 
stories.

Dealing with the running tests in both Webrat and a browser testing
framework requires some separation when running the stories. I''ve been
meaning to make a post on this...

Webrat has started to look at how its syntax can be used to drive
Selenium/Watir (checkout the latest in git). How useful this is and
where it goes I''m unsure but its interesting!

If you are using JRuby a nice tool which wraps the Java HtmlUnit is
Celerity:
http://celerity.rubyforge.org/

At the moment I''m yet to see something like HtmlUnit on the ruby
platform. I watch Celerity in envy :)

--
Joseph Wilk
http://www.joesniff.co.uk
-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Joseph Wilk wrote:
> If you are using JRuby a nice tool which wraps the Java HtmlUnit is
> Celerity:
> http://celerity.rubyforge.org/
> 
> At the moment I''m yet to see something like HtmlUnit on the ruby
> platform. I watch Celerity in envy :)
Interesting. On the surface HtmlUnit looks just like webrat - what''s
the
difference?
-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Matt Wynne wrote:
> Interesting. On the surface HtmlUnit looks just like webrat -
what''s the
> difference?
>   
HtmlUnit is quite different.  It is a language/framework agnostic way to 
test any webapp *including* the app''s JS.  All of this, even the JS, is
in memory and does not require a browser just like webrat.  It does the 
JS by using Rhino, Java''s implementation of JS.  At the moment, webrat 
is tied to rails integration testing framework (their are forks that 
allow merb testing as well that I have used successfully.)  As Joseph 
said their is currently some work to wrap the webrat API around 
Selenuin, mechanize, etc, that would break it''s dependence on the 
integration testing framework in rails.  Having it tied to the 
integration framework does give you some flexibility though and is most 
likely faster.

To answer your original question on how people are using it... In the 
past project I did I ended up with 100+ scenarios all using webrat.  We 
decided to make the entire site with UJS (unobtrusive JS) which lent it 
self to testing it with webrat.  The extra JS we added we have not yet 
wrapped stories around it so we have a manual testing cycle before each 
major deployment.  On the current project I''m on we are going to be 
using JS heavily and will most likely leverage HtmlUnit (Celerity) in 
our stories to keep them all in-memory.  If your app is not extremely JS 
dependent then I would recommend the UJS + webrat route.


@Joseph
> If you are using JRuby a nice tool which wraps the Java HtmlUnit is
> Celerity:
> http://celerity.rubyforge.org/
>
> At the moment I''m yet to see something like HtmlUnit on the ruby
> platform. I watch Celerity in envy :)
>   
Have you seen Johnson yet?
http://github.com/jbarnette/johnson/tree/master

It''s goal is to wrap Mozilla''s JS engine written in C,
SpiderMonkey, in
ruby.  With this equivalent solution in place like Java''s Rhino it will
be possible to create an HtmlUnit like testing framwork entirely in Ruby 
and perhaps just extend webrat to get JS functionality.  I have not yet 
realll played around with it and I haven''t been able to find any posts 
about how to use it..  but it is something to keep your eye on.

Johnson seems young so, as I said earlier, we will probably try to use 
the more mature HtmlUnit (a''la JRuby) to do our in-memory JS testing.

-Ben

I''m using stories with Webrat, and really like it.  As mentioned, it
doesn''t cover the JavaScript bit, but so far that''s ok, we
don''t have
enough that I can''t just test it manually (dread!).

But, yes, since starting to use stories, I''d guess I''ve
written maybe
two or three controller tests, and have wound up deleting many of my
view tests (and don''t use Rails integration tests at all).  So,
essentially, what it''s boiling down to for me, is that I have my
examples for models, and then use stories for everything else.  There
have been a few tricky cases to do with stories, but otherwise I just
like it far better, and feel it''s a much better and more effective way
to test since it''s going to emulate what really happens on your site.

One of the things that''s driven me to using stories so much more is
the fragile nature of the other tests, in that it seems like view and
controller tests break so much more easily with various changes,
whereas stories don''t.  This likely depends on how much you test the
precise text and such on a page.


On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 3:12 AM, Matt Wynne <lists at ruby-forum.com>
wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I''ve been using rspec / rails for just over a week now, and
I''m loving
> the specification framework.  The way I can group examples together
> feels really natural, and I''m finding the TDD flow terrific.
>
> Thus far I''ve used the describe / it "should..." syntax
to basically do
> TDD of my controllers, views and models, with splendid isolation using
> the mocking framework. I''ve yet to write any
''integrations tests'', in
> fact I''m not yet clear how much value they have.
>
> What originally attracted me to rspec was hearing Dan North talk about
> the plain text stories, and I had some fun in my previous life as a C#
> programmer using them to drive watir tests of an ASP.NET app.
>
> What I''m not sure about is how they''re most appropriately
used in rails.
>
> Are people generally using them, as I was in the .NET world, to drive
> selenium/watir acceptance tests, or do they have value as replacements
> to the rails ''integration tests''?
>
> How about webrat? or some other glue / tool that I haven''t heard
of yet?
>
> Just a quick answer from anyone out there using these tools would be
> great in order to get a feel for the current state of the art, and some
> fresh fuel for my googling!
>
> Sorry if this post is a bit rambling... thanks for bearing with me as I
> scramble up the learning curve!
>
> cheers,
> Matt
> --
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
> _______________________________________________
> rspec-users mailing list
> rspec-users at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users
>


-- 
Christopher Bailey
Cobalt Edge LLC
http://cobaltedge.com

Hi all.

On 6 Aug 2008, at 15:47, Christopher Bailey wrote:
> But, yes, since starting to use stories, I''d guess I''ve
written maybe
> two or three controller tests, and have wound up deleting many of my
> view tests (and don''t use Rails integration tests at all).  So,
> essentially, what it''s boiling down to for me, is that I have my
> examples for models, and then use stories for everything else.  There
> have been a few tricky cases to do with stories, but otherwise I just
> like it far better, and feel it''s a much better and more effective
way
> to test since it''s going to emulate what really happens on your
site.
>

I''ve not used stories in anger yet (although my current personal  
project is gathering a large selection of text stories as I think of  
new functionality).

The thing that''s been holding me back is the granularity.

Do you try and write a scenario for every possible case?

For example, if my story was about signing up for an account, would  
you write a sign up story with scenarios for success and scenarios  
for failure (and let your controller/model specs deal with the  
individual reasons that the signup may fail) or would you have  
scenarios for "username is taken", "password and confirmation do
not
match" etc (effectively making the other tests slightly redundant, as  
Christopher mentioned)?

Cheers,

Baz.

Rahoul Baruah
Web design and development: http://www.3hv.co.uk/
Nottingham Forest: http://www.eighteensixtyfive.co.uk/
Serious Rails Hosting: http://www.brightbox.co.uk/
Lifecast: http://www.madeofstone.net/






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Rahoul Baruah wrote:
> 
> The thing that''s been holding me back is the granularity.
> 
> Do you try and write a scenario for every possible case?
> 
It might help to have a look at the thread that starts here:
http://www.benmabey.com/2008/05/19/imperative-vs-declarative-scenarios-in-user-stories/

Its a subtlety I''m only just getting my head around, but
there''s a
wealth of useful experience behind these posts.

cheers,
Matt
-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

On 6 Aug 2008, at 16:18, Matt Wynne wrote:
>
> It might help to have a look at the thread that starts here:
> http://www.benmabey.com/2008/05/19/imperative-vs-declarative- 
> scenarios-in-user-stories/
>
> Its a subtlety I''m only just getting my head around, but
there''s a
> wealth of useful experience behind these posts.
Thanks Matt (and Ben), that''s very helpful.

I''m definitely in the "declarative, token for conversation"
camp
then.  So I would write a scenario for success and one for failure  
and let my models (and/or controllers) deal with what failure  
actually means.

Heh, I like this stuff - it''s got me enthused about programming in a  
way that haven''t been since I first came across Rails.

B.

Rahoul Baruah
Web design and development: http://www.3hv.co.uk/
Nottingham Forest: http://www.eighteensixtyfive.co.uk/
Serious Rails Hosting: http://www.brightbox.co.uk/
Lifecast: http://www.madeofstone.net/






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Note that there''s also some existing discussion on this list that I
just
found (with a search for ''RailsStory''):
http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/156930#new
-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Matt Wynne wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> 
> What originally attracted me to rspec was hearing Dan North talk about
> the plain text stories, and I had some fun in my previous life as a C#
> programmer using them to drive watir tests of an ASP.NET app.
> 
> What I''m not sure about is how they''re most appropriately
used in rails.
I''m just getting back into RSpec, and stories are new to me. 
I''m finding a
lot of inspiration from Ben Mabey''s article/tutorial, which uses RSpec
with
webrat:

http://www.benmabey.com/2008/02/04/rspec-plain-text-stories-webrat-chunky-bacon/