Question

I’m writing a spec to verify that my Video model will create a proper thumbnail for a vimeo video when it is created. It looks something like this:

    it "creates thumbnail url" do
      vimeo_url = "http://player.vimeo.com/video/12345"
      vid = Factory.build(:video, video_url:vimeo_url)
      # thumbnail created when saved
      vid.save!

      expect do
        URI.parse(vid.thumbnail_url)
      end.to_not raise_error
    end

The problem is that my test is super slow because it has to hit vimeo.com. So I’m trying to stub the method that calls to the server. So two questions:

1) Is this the correct way/time to stub something

2) If yes, how do I stub it? In my Video model I have a method called get_vimeo_thumbnail() that hits vimeo.com. I want to stub that method. But if in my spec I do vid.stub(:get_vimeo_thumbnail).and_return("http://someurl.com") it doesn’t work. When I run the test it still hits vimeo.com.

Answer 1

The VCR gem is probably worth considering. It hits the real Web service first time you run it and records the response so that it can be replayed next time you run the test (making subsequent tests fast).

I can’t see anything wrong with the stub call you are making if you are calling stub before save!.