Question

We now have a considerable size rails(2.3.9) application with 0 rails test cases. (What???). Yes. It is possible:).

Moving on, if we want to base our testing on one framework, which one should we pick, cucumber, rspec1 or rails built in testing framework?. The reason I am saying only one framework is because of the complexity in learning and managing multiple frameworks for the same purpose.

Q1: Some of the y2009 SO
questions recommend using rspec
for unit testing
models/controllers and cucumber for
testing views. Is that (as of 23 June
2011) still a valid recommendation?

Q2: Has anybody managed to build all
the test cases they needed on a single
framework(say just Cucumber)?, if
yes,which one?

Answer 1

It’s somewhat a matter of preference, but of the three I would pick rspec or Test::Unit. RSpec has been criticized for being over-engineered lately, but I really like:

• the matcher syntax (value.should == 1 vs. assert_equal(value, 1))
• test names not confined to method names (it "does something awesome" { ... } vs def test_it_does_something_awesome; ...; end)

You can achieve both of these with TestUnit with some supporting libraries with relative ease… but I just prefer to use RSpec.

When you write code and test, usually (always?) it’s better to start from the outside in: IE, write an integration test (a logged in user clicks a button to add $5.00 item to cart, then checks out, and pays. His credit card should be charged $5.00). So rather than testing specific class behaviors (as you do with unit tests), you’ll want to be creating objects in the database and making get / post / etc. calls that interact with the site in a similar way that the users web browser would, making your test penetrate the entire stack.

Lately I have liked using Steak inside of RSpec for my integration tests (using Capybara to facilitate the web interaction)

Once you build up your outer perimeter, then I would recommend you start focusing on the unit tests.

Unit tests can be fantastic for documenting a class’s behavior. I group them around methods and describe what can be passed to the method, and what I expect to be returned.

describe Object do
  describe "#method" do
    it "returns 4 when passed 2" do
      ...
    end
   end
end