Hi David,
I see your point about concentrating on outcomes rather than implementation.
I suppose who cares about implementation, its the effect code on the "state
of the world" that is important.
Here's an unmodified sample:
context ", when a new policy is activated on unchanged content" do
before(:each) do
setup_common_mocks
end
it "should create a new policy, the new violation and location, resolve
previous violations, recalculate location MD5, and refresh caches" do
# content hasn't changed
@content = mock(:content, :content_md5 => "84290324908230948",
:most_recent_violations => [mock(:violation_mr, :update_folder_count =>
nil)])
@content_descriptor = mock(:content_descriptor, :contents =>
[...@content], :most_recent_content => @content, :folder => mock(:folder))
ContentDescriptor.should_receive(:by_path_md5_and_site).once.and_return([...@content_descriptor])
# Policy is new, gets created once
Policy.should_receive(:find_by_account_category_and_name).once
PolicyCategory.should_receive(:find_by_account_and_name).once.and_return(mock(:policy_category))
Policy.should_receive(:create!).once.and_return(mock(:policy))
# below are the changes affected
Violation.should_receive(:resolve_violations).once
Violation.should_receive(:recalculate_violation_md5).once.and_return(10)
Violation.should_receive(:find_by_content_id_and_policy_id).once.and_return(nil)
violation = mock(:new_violation1, :location_md5= => nil, :save =>
true)
Violation.should_receive(:new).once.and_return(violation)
violation.should_receive(:save).once
Location.should_receive(:create!).once.and_return(mock(:location1))
@content.should_receive(:most_recent_violations=).once
@content.should_receive(:unresolved_violation_count=).once
@content.should_receive(:save).once
CacheMaintenance.should_receive(:remove_folder_cache_keys).twice
record
end
end
I'm going to try and refactor the specs so that anything that doesn't
directly modify state of the app is removed.
Thanks,
Ijonas.
On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 11:16 AM, David Chelimsky <dchelim...@gmail.com>wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 4:33 AM, Ijonas Kisselbach <
> ijonas.kisselb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm struggling with structuring my specs describing a large process in my
>> app. There are multiple paths of execution through that process each of
>> which I'm trying to describe using a different rspec context, eg.
>>
>> describe Violation do
>> context ", when nothing has changed since the last run"
>> context ", when new content has been created, but policies remain the
>> same"
>> context ", when new policies are activated, but content remains the
>> same"
>> end
>>
>> Each of the three scenarios/context above have got a bunch of "it
>> should..." blocks in it which in turn contain a whole bunch of
>> should_receives and should_not_receives on various mocked objects, thereby
>> exercising the functionality of the large process.
>>
>> I would like the context to read as follows:
>>
>> context ", when new policies are activated, but content remains the same"
>> do
>> it "should create the new policy" do
>> # a whole bunch of expectations testing the policy creation part of
>> the process
>> end
>> it "should create a new violation and location" do
>> # a whole bunch of expectations testing the violation creation part
>> of the process
>> end
>> it "should resolve previous violations" do
>> # a whole bunch of expections testing retrieval of previous
>> violations and performing updates on them
>> end
>> ....
>> end
>>
>> The problem is: if I compartmentalize my expectations into the individual
>> it-should-blocks then something will fail in the execution of the large
>> process, typically caused by a mock not being setup. If I lump all my
>> expectations in the before(:each)-block then the whole thing springs to
>> life, but I lose my compartmentalization of the specs and the whole thing
>> becomes unreadable.
>>
>> I guess I'm looking for help and advice on how best combat the lumping of
>> expectations into the before-block. Should I separate my stubbing from my
>> expectations ?
>>
>> Many thanks for your advice.
>>
>
> I'd need to see the actual code to respond in any precise way here, but
> generally, it sounds like you're specifying too much about the
> implementation rather than the outcomes. What happens if you eliminate all
> of the mocks in these examples and just have expectations like
> "Policy.find(@policy_id).should_not be_nil"?
>
> David
>
>
>>
>> (I'm using rspec 1.2.9 and Rails 2.2.2 on OSX)
>>
>> Regards,
>> Ijonas.
>
>
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