Sematics.. the method is never returning an error, it raises one. So
you can't say @audience.stats="dsfds" and expect to see an exception
returned right?
Since an exception is being raised you have to think of another way of
testing it aside from checking it's return value... So you could do
something like:
an_error_was_raised = false
begin
@audience.stats = 'Market Goblin'
rescue
an_error_was_raised = true
end
an_error_was_raised.should == true
I am not suggesting you do this. This is just to illustrate how you
would going about testing to see if an error was raised. The
raise_error matcher is slightly more complicated in order to be able to
ensure certain errors are raised but this is the general idea. So the
lambda does not return an error but the lambda is passed into the
matcher so it can perform a similar operation as the code above
illustrates. I hope that clarified things a bit.
Here is another example for good measure with a lambda involved.. you
can then see how a lambda how be useful in this situation:
an_error_was_raised = false
my_code = lambda { @audience.stats = 'Market Goblin' }
begin
my_code.call
rescue
an_error_was_raised = true
end
an_error_was_raised.should == true
Better?
-Ben
Andrew WC Brown wrote:
> So if I understand correctly,
>
> The following didn't raise an error:
>
> @audience.stats = 'Market Goblin'
> @audience.stats.should raise_error
>
> because audience.stats didn't return an error.
>
> Where as lambda will return an error.
>
> On Jan 29, 2008 10:58 PM, Ben Mabey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote:
>
> Andrew WC Brown wrote:
> > ohhhhh, I left in:
> >
> > it "should return an error when passed a string" do
> > @audience.stats = 'Market Goblin'
> > lambda [EMAIL PROTECTED] = 'Market Goblin'}.should raise_error
> > end
> >
> > when yours is:
> >
> > it "should return an error when passed a string" do
> > lambda [EMAIL PROTECTED] = 'Market Goblin'}.should raise_error
> > end
> >
> > I've seen lambda before but not sure what it does.
>
> A lambda in ruby is like a block or a Proc. There are some
> differences
> between them, but for this simple use you can just think of it as a
> block of code that will be passed to the 'raise_error' matcher
> that then
> runs that block of code checking to see if an Exception is raised when
> it is ran. You can also pass in the specific exception type to be
> more
> specific.
>
> As a personal preference I like to alias lambda to 'running' in my
> spec_helper.rb... I think this reads a lot better:
> running [EMAIL PROTECTED] = 'Market Goblin'}.should raise_error
>
> For more on lambdas refer to the pickaxe. If you want more detailed
> information of the subtle differences between them, Procs, blocks, and
> methods check this out:
> http://innig.net/software/ruby/closures-in-ruby.rb
>
> -Ben
>
>
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