On Jun 28, 2009, at 8:32 AM, Jesse Crockett wrote:
Hello,
I've been trying for two years to pick up BDD. I'm making progress,
have just read through the chapters in The RSpec Book on spec'ing
views
and controllers.
What is the difference between using integrate_views and doing what
seems to be a lot of extra work to test the views in isolation?
When I use integrate_views, can I write view spec in what would
otherwise be isolated controller spec?
Correct, by default RSpec's controller specs will not render the
view. This allows you to test the controller and view in complete
isolation. By turning on integrate_views you can specify what the
rendered view should contain at the same time. If you were to do
outside-in dev starting from the view you would start out by writing
an isolated view spec. That spec would say that such and such would
be displayed. This would in turn prompt you to assign something to
that view for it to be rendered. That is then your signal that the
controller needs to assign that object. So, you go up a level and
make sure that the controller action is assigning the needed object
for the view. That object will most likely have to answer to some
methods used in the view so that prompts you to start writing examples
on the model level. Isolation has it's benefits, however an
integration test (i.e. Cucumber scenario) is really needed to make
sure these parts are all working together as expected.
I read that I'm "encouraged" to do these in isolation, but IMHO the
chapter on spec'ing views is not very convincing in its own right, it
tells me that it's good, but doesn't show me as much, compared to the
examples and descriptions of circumstance that make several other
chapters very convincing.
FWIW Jesse, you are not alone on this list in thinking that view specs
are not that valuable. A lot of people share your opinion, and I
think Cucumber is generally used to specify the views the majority of
the time. This enables you to specify your controllers in isolation
since your Cucumber features are cutting through the entire stack. I
personally think view specs are a very nice tool to have available,
but I would only use them on complex views. By complex I don't mean
riddled with logic, but a view that has a lot of stuff going on which
is hard to set up all in one integration test (or Cucumber scenario).
Since the majority of views are very simple then verifying them just
in Cucumber is good enough, IMO.
-Ben
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