Comments on: Readable test names in Rails 2.1

By: Hongli

Hongli — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:21:39 +0000

I didn’t feel like installing RSpec. The Test::Unit stubs had already been created so I used them instead.

By: Pratik

Pratik — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:14:22 +0000

Not that I have any love for RSpec, but how hard can it be to alias :it to :should, :test, :shit, :whatever ? I don’t understand the reason to choose your testing library based on the it/test/should/etc. keyword. I think there are better parameters for taking that decision.

By: RSL

RSL — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 12:46:47 +0000

@ Hongli. I see but I’m not sure I agree. In RSpec, you wouldn’t be specing the message getting sent in the Mailman class per se so much as the Mailman class sending the mail. [Yes, it's a semantic difference and that's somewhat a big deal in RSpec, viz Sapir-Whorf etc.]. Amending my spec to reflect this…

test “a message with a password protected channel as recipient will be delivered to a user’s mailbox, if that user is subscribed to said channel” # => it “should send message to user if channel is password protected and user is subscribed to channel”

I don’t want to sound like I’m arguing to be persnickety. I only mean to point out that RSpec is more than just “clever” phrasing of Test::Unit ideas and that the decision to use it or not shouldn’t just be made on naming conventions.

By: Aleksandr

Aleksandr — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 10:59:01 +0000

Nice trick. But I don’t like that IDEs don’t recognize these test methods anymore.

By: Chu Yeow

Chu Yeow — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 05:17:30 +0000

Hehe Hongli, I liked Spice and Wolf but kinda dropped Gunslinger Girl 2

Btw, if you aren’t using it yet, MyAnimeList is kick-ass for keeping track of anime (my list is at http://myanimelist.net/animelist/chuyeow).

By: Hongli

Hongli — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 20:49:30 +0000

RSL: the problem is that “message” is not the subject of the test description: the Mailman class is. So “it” would be totally inappropriate.

By: Andy Waite

Andy Waite — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 15:49:50 +0000

This (and Shoulda) certainly make things easier on the eyes, but long test names are still awkward to read and comprehend. And if you have a few in the one file that only vary by a word or two, it’s easy to confuse them and edit the wrong method.

Shoulda’s support for contexts might be helpful for this, but I haven’t dug into it much yet.

By: RSL

RSL — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 11:38:24 +0000

Not that I’m pushing the RSpec crack [well, okay mebbe a little] but I don’t see how any of the test names in your code wouldn’t be shorter using RSpec’s “it” naming standard.

test “an anime should be invalid if any of its characters are invalid” # => it “should be invalid if it has invalid characters”
test “a message with a password protected channel as recipient will be delivered to a user’s mailbox, if that user is subscribed to said channel” # => it “should get delivered to the user if channel is password protected and user is subscribed to channel”

That last one could be even shorter if another test shares the conditionality of the channel being password protected because it could be moved to the describe block. There’s plenty of reasons to not use RSpec though. I just don’t think the naming of the tests is one of them. YMMV.

By: Anthony Eden

Anthony Eden — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 08:19:28 +0000

+1 for Shoulda.

By: Joshua

Joshua — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 07:31:15 +0000

This has been available (along with nested context blocks) via a plugin called Shoulda (http://www.thoughtbot.com/projects/shoulda) for some time now. I’m not sure if the test naming would be to your liking, though.