Question

I am trying to get a Bill object to perform tests on. This is a US congress bill, which I have in xml via rsync on a data directory. My code takes in the name of the bill, say “h1.xml”, parses the xml and then gets the full text of the bill from http://www.govtrack.us. So, in my main app, to create a bill

• Get a bill name (e.g. h1) (via globbing in the method def self.update_from_directory)

  def self.update_from_directory
    Dir.glob("#{Rails.root}/data/bills/small_set/*.xml").each do |bill_path|
      bill_name = bill_path.match(/.*\/(.*).xml$/)[1]
      b = Bill.find_or_create_by(:govtrack_name => bill_name)
      b.update_bill
      b.save!
    end
  end

• Update the bill

def update_bill
    file_data = File.new("#{Rails.root}/data/bills/#{self.govtrack_name}.xml", 'r')
    bill = Feedzirra::Parser::GovTrackBill.parse(file_data)
    if bill && (self.introduced_date.nil? || (bill.introduced_date.to_date > self.introduced_date))

      self.congress = bill.congress
      self.bill_type = bill.bill_type
      self.bill_number = bill.bill_number
      ... and so on . . . until:
      get_bill_text 

• Update the bill record with the bill text

  def get_bill_text
      bill_object = HTTParty.get("#{GOVTRACK_URL}data/us/bills.text/#{self.congress.to_s}/#{self.bill_type}/#{self.bill_type + self.bill_number.to_s}.html")
      self.bill_html = bill_object.response.body
      self.text_updated_on = Date.today
      Rails.logger.info "Updated Bill Text for #{self.ident}"
  end

My goal is very simple, I want to mock a whole bill for a test:

    def setup
       @my_test_bill = Bill.new(:govtrack_id => "h1")
       @my_test_bill.update_bill
    end

I am trying to get webmock and vcr working, but all the examples I can find, provide a way to mock a specific call and I don’t want to have to retype a whole new update_bill method.

Any thoughts greatly appreciated.

Tim

Answer 1

Consider changing your update_bill method to:

def update_bill
  file_data = File.new("#{Rails.root}/data/bills/#{self.govtrack_name}.xml", 'r')
  bill = Feedzirra::Parser::GovTrackBill.parse(file_data)
  if bill && (self.introduced_date.nil? || (bill.introduced_date.to_date > self.introduced_date))

  self.congress = bill.congress
  self.bill_type = bill.bill_type
  self.bill_number = bill.bill_number

  # Yield to a block that can perform arbitrary calls on this bill
  if block_given?
    yield(self)
  end

  # Fill bill text if empty
  if bill_html.blank? && text_updated_on.blank?
    get_bill_text
  end
end

Then change your setup method to:

def setup
   @my_test_bill = Bill.new(:govtrack_id => "h1")
   @my_test_bill.update_bill do |bill|
     bill.text_updated_on = Date.today
     bill.bill_html = "The mock bill contents"
   end
end

That may not be exactly the solution, but this kind of approach–passing the receiver back to a block given to the method, allows you to modify the exact behavior of a given method at runtime.