Question

I am writing test for cotroller but without succes. My test is:

describe VideosController do
  describe 'index' do
    it 'should select the index template for rendering' do
      Video.stub(:video_exists?).with("KgfdlZuVz7I").and_return(true)
      get :index, { :q => "KgfdlZuVz7I" }
      response.should render_template('index')
    end
  end
end

Here is controller.

class VideosController < ApplicationController
  def index
    if params[:q]
      params_hash = CGI::parse(params[:q])
      if Video.video_exists?(params_hash.values[0][0])
        video = Video.new :video_id => params_hash.values[0][0]
        if video.save!
          flash[:notification] = "Video found."
        else
          flash[:notification] = "Video found but not saved to database."
        end
        redirect_to root_path  
      else
        flash[:notification] = "Video not found."
        redirect_to root_path
      end
    end
  end
end

Test doesn’t pass and it raises message:

VideosController index should select the index template for rendering
Failure/Error: get :index, { :q => “KgfdlZuVz7I” }
received :video_exists? with une
xpected arguments
expected: (“KgfdlZuVz7I”)
got: (no args)
Please stub a default value first if message might be received with other args as well.
# ./app/controllers/videos_controller.rb:5:in index'
# ./spec/controllers/videos_controller_spec.rb:12:inblock (3 levels) in ‘

Think I am not stubbing Video on right way, because I stubbed just video_exists? but not new and save. But I don’t know how to resolve this since I am new in TDD and Rspec.

Answer 1

As piece of advice #1 you should not write out your “random string” twice like you did in your test. That is extremely susceptible to mistyping and very difficult to visually verify. Use this instead:

rnd_id = "KgfdlZuVz7I"
Video.stub(:video_exists?).with(rnd_id).and_return(true)
get :index, { :q => rnd_id }

Also, I’m not sure what params_hash = CGI::parse(params[:q]) is supposed to be doing. Why not just use the params like normal?

class VideosController < ApplicationController
  def index
    if params[:q]
      if Video.video_exists?(params[:q])
        video = Video.new :video_id => params[:q]
        if video.save!
          flash[:notification] = "Video found."
        else
          flash[:notification] = "Video found but not saved to database."
        end
        redirect_to root_path  
      else
        flash[:notification] = "Video not found."
        redirect_to root_path
      end
    end
  end
end