Question

I’m testing an initialization method that uses both puts and gets to start off a small script.

Here’s the code:

def init  
  puts 'type xml file name'
  @xml_name = gets.chomp
  f = File.open(@xml_name)
  doc = Nokogiri::XML(f)
  f.close
  build_headers(doc)
end

Here’s the test code:

describe XmlParser do

  describe "init" do
    before(:each) do
      stub!(:gets).and_return('')
      stub!(:puts)
    end

    it "should give a greeting message 'type xml file name'" do
      XmlParser.stub!(:build_headers).with(nil)
      should_receive(:puts).with('type xml file name')
      XmlParser::init
    end


  end
end

It essentially throws an error when gets is called in the init method. Is there a way to simply stub these methods? Or should i refactor the code to use an accepted STDOUT and STDIN, and simply stub those objects?

Answer 1

Think about which object is receiving that gets method call. It looks like you’re calling it directly on XmlParser, since that’s what self would be if I understand your init method correctly.

So, does this work?

XmlParser.stub(:gets).and_return('')