Question

I have a Rails app using AuthLogic and have gotten it to the point of using test doubles to step in for the current_user. There are a limited set of states for the current_user that are used repeatedly in many controller specs.

Continuing from this example, imagine controllers with similar double setup in each context. You can see that’s a lot of repeated code. What’s the preferred way for applying some DRY for this?

controller_1_spec.rb

require 'spec_helper'

describe Controller1 do

  describe "GET 'index'" do

    context "when user has state A" do
      before(:each) do
        user = double("User")
        user.stub(:state).and_return("A")
        user_session = double("UserSession")
        user_session.stub(:user).and_return(user)
        UserSession.stub(:find).and_return(user_session)
      end

      it "should test something for users with State A" do
        get :index
      end

      it "should test something else for users with State A" do
        get :index
      end
    end

    context "when user has state B" do
      before(:each) do
        user = double("User")
        user.stub(:state).and_return("B")
        user_session = double("UserSession")
        user_session.stub(:user).and_return(user)
        UserSession.stub(:find).and_return(user_session)
      end

      it "should test something for users with State B" do
        get :index
      end

      it "should test something else for users with State B" do
        get :index
      end
    end
  end
end

Is the best way just to add helper methods to spec_helper or is there something more best practice like?

Answer 1

Move the setup code to helper methods defined in spec_helper.rb or in a spec/support/{something}.rb file.

def userInAStateWithSession
  user = double("User")
  user.stub(:state).and_return("A")
  user_session = double("UserSession")
  user_session.stub(:user).and_return(user)
  UserSession.stub(:find).and_return(user_session)
  return user
end

–

describe Controller1 do

  describe "GET 'index'" do

    context "when user has state A" do
      before(:each) do
        user = userInAStateWithSession
      end

      ...