Question

I’m trying to stub the facebook graph api that is wrapped by Koala. My goal is to verify that the graph is initialized with the given access token, and the method “me” is called.

My rspec code looks like:

require ‘spec_helper’

describe User do

  describe '.new_or_existing_facebook_user' do
    it 'should get the users info from facebook using the access token' do
      # SETUP
      access_token = '231231231321'
      # build stub of koala graph that expected get_object with 'me' to be called and return an object with an email
      stub_graph = stub(Koala::Facebook::API)
      stub_graph.stub(:get_object). with('me'). and_return({
        :email => '[e-mail]'
      })
      # setup initializer to return that stub
      Koala::Facebook::API.stub(:new) .with(access_token). and_return(stub_graph)

      # TEST
      user = User.new_or_existing_facebook_user(access_token)

      # SHOULD
      stub_graph.should_receive(:get_object).with('me') 
    end
  end
end

Model code looks like:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  # attributes left out for demo
  class << self
    def new_or_existing_facebook_user(access_token)
      @graph = Koala::Facebook::API.new(access_token)
      @me = @graph.get_object('me')

      # rest of method left out for demo
    end
  end
end

When running the test, I get the error:

  1) User.new_or_existing_facebook_user should get the users info from facebook using the access token
     Failure/Error: stub_graph.should_receive(:get_object).with('me')
       (Stub Koala::Facebook::API).get_object("me")
           expected: 1 time
           received: 0 times
     # ./spec/models/user_spec.rb:21:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

How am I stubbing that method wrong?

Answer 1

The should_receive needs to go before the method is called. Rspec message expectations work by taking over the method and listening to it, very similarly to stub. In fact, you can put it in place of your stub.

The expectation will then decide whether it succeeds or not after the rest of the spec is finished.

Try this instead:

describe User do

  describe '.new_or_existing_facebook_user' do
    it 'should get the users info from facebook using the access token' do
      # SETUP
      access_token = '231231231321'
      # build stub of koala graph that expected get_object with 'me' to be called and return an object with an email
      stub_graph = stub(Koala::Facebook::API)

      # SHOULD
      stub_graph.should_receive(:get_object).with('me').and_return({
        :email => '[e-mail]'
      })

      # setup initializer to return that stub
      Koala::Facebook::API.stub(:new).with(access_token).and_return(stub_graph)     

      # TEST
      user = User.new_or_existing_facebook_user(access_token)
    end
  end
end