On May 26, 2010, at 9:37 PM, Nadal wrote:
> Here is my spec.
>
> describe Exception2db do
> context "attributes" do
> subject { Exception2db.create(:exception => $exception_data_xml) }
>
> specify { subject.controller.should == 'exception2db/main' }
> specify { subject.error_message.should == 'RuntimeError: 46' }
> specify { subject.user_agent.should == "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U;
> Intel Mac OS X 10_6_3; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.4 (KHTML, like Gecko)
> Chrome/5.0.375.38 Safari/533.4" }
> end
> end
>
> Here is specdoc.
>
> Exception2db attributes
> - should == "exception2db/main"
> - should == "RuntimeError: 46"
> - should == "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_3; en-US)
> AppleWebKit/533.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.375.38 Safari/533.4"
>
> All the tests are passing. However the specdoc message is not very
> clean.
>
> How can I improve the message? What am I missing? The idea of wrapping
> each of my specify inside "it" to just to have better message is not
> very DRY.
I look at it the other way: accepting unclear messages just to keep things DRY
is missing the point.
DRY is about reducing duplication of concepts, not letters. At its heart, DRY
is about maintenance. Duplication can come in very sinister forms, like two
methods with different names on two different objects that accomplish the same
task. That's the sort of duplication that kills maintenance because a new
requirement comes in and you don't even realize you have two places to change
in the code base.
Consider the following two examples:
it "concats the first and last name" do
first_name = "David"
last_name = "Chelimsky"
person = Person.new(
:first_name => first_name,
:last_name => last_name
)
person.full_name.should == "#{first_name} #{last_name}"
end
it "concats the first and last name" do
person = Person.new(
:first_name => "David",
:last_name => "Chelimsky"
)
person.full_name.should == "David Chelimsky"
end
Which one is DRYer? You could argue the first one is, because the string
literals are not repeated. You could argue that the second one is, because the
variable names are not repeated. You might argue the first one is because, even
though the variable names are repeated, the failure message you get if you type
"frist_name" will be very informative. You might argue that typing "Chelmisky"
in the second one would also give you an informative message. Also, the first
one very likely duplicates the actual implementation of the full_name method.
And on, and on, and on, and on.
Here's what I don't really think you can argue against: the second one is
easier to read and understand.
In the example you gave, I have absolutely no idea what those specs are telling
me about the Exception2db object. After some study, I _think_ I understand, but
it took a minute. What I'd like to see in the specdoc output is something like:
Exception2db
stores the controller
stores the runtime error
stores the user agent
Now I know what this thing DOES. Sure, the spec is going to have more lines in
it, but the concepts expressed in the specdoc are _different_ from the concepts
in the expectations. In my book, that's not a DRY violation at all.
HTH,
David
ps - there is some irony in the fact that I keep repeating myself on this exact
topic on this list. I think I need to write this up in a blog post and point
people to that in the future. Now THAT would be DRY.
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