Question

I have to preface all my posts about rails: I’m a novice.

Is it necessary to write tests for my app to work properly or is it strictly for finding breaks?

Answer 1

Testing your app is not necessary for it to work, but it is highly recommended and a very good practice. Testing your application will help you develop a better piece of software and a much more solid application. In the Rails world BDD(Behavior Driven Development) is very used as a testing and development technique.

I recommend you two diferent testing suites:

• The first one is Rspec that will help you with all your controllers, and models unit testing
• Cucumber is a testing suite that will test your application as a whole(integration test), this one is great for a more “real life” testing approach

I encourage you to check both Rspec and Cucumber, there are also other great testing suites like Test Unit.

Remember, testing your application will give you great benefits!

NOTE: Rspec and Cucumber are not mutually exclusive, actually they are recommended to use in conjunction