Question

Consider a Rails app that hits a (Sinatra app) API being developed separately from the Rails app. I want to test an API call from within the Rails tests.

The API code:

post '/foo/create' do
  ...

I created a mock, but that doesn’t make sense because it is just a copy of the API file. That stinks.

It is possible to require the API file in the test. But how to call it from RSpec? There is no route in the Rails app for it.

One option is to start the API and make the HTTP call from the Rails test, but this is smelly because:

1. You have to start the API server to run the Rails tests
2. Why should a Rails test make a HTTP request? Rack::Test simulates this.
3. I don’t think this will work because the apps have different test databases, but share the same production database.

EDIT: The point of the test is that the API call creates records that the Rails app is expecting. So the Rails app needs to test the state of the database after the API call is made.

Answer 1

Well. The perfect answer for you is a gem to mock the answer like webmock. It will fake a response when acessing that url, so on the test your app will make the requisition as it was for real, only that before it hits the web, it will hit your mock and respond with the desired answer.