Everyday Rails Testing with RSpec (The Book: Latest Edition)
Everyday Rails Testing with RSpec
A practical approach to test-driven development
About the Book
Have you gotten your hands dirty with a Rails application or two, but lack reliable test coverage? Does your application testing consist of a series of browser clicks, hoping you cover everything? Or do you just cross your fingers and hope for the best that everything will just work?
Don't worry, everyone has been there at some point--and while testing and test-driven development are important aspects of Rails development, many tutorials gloss over these components. In Everyday Rails Testing with RSpec, I'll show you how I got past that hurdle, increasing my code's trustworthiness and saving untold time in browser-based testing.
About the Author
Table of Contents
- Preface to this edition
- Acknowledgements
-
1. Introduction
- Why RSpec?
- Who should read this book
- My testing philosophy
- How the book is organized
- Downloading the sample code
- Code conventions
- Discussion and errata
- A note about gem versions
- About the sample application
-
2. Setting up RSpec
- Gemfile
- Test database
- RSpec configuration
-
Faster test suite start times with the
rspecbinstub - Try it out!
- Generators
- Summary
- Questions
- Exercises
-
3. Model specs
- Anatomy of a model spec
- Creating a model spec
- The RSpec syntax
- Testing validations
- Testing instance methods
- Testing class methods and scopes
- Testing for failures
- More about matchers
- DRYer specs with describe, context, before and after
- Summary
- Question
- Exercise
-
4. Creating meaningful test data
- Factories versus fixtures
- Installing Factory Bot
- Adding factories to the application
- Generating unique data with sequences
- Associations in factories
- Avoiding duplication in factories
- Callbacks
- How to use factories safely
- Summary
- Exercises
-
5. Controller specs
- Basic controller specs
- Authenticated controller specs
- Testing user input
- Testing user input errors
- Handling non-HTML output
- Summary
- Question
- Exercises
-
6. Testing the user interface with feature specs
- Why feature specs?
- Additional dependencies
- A basic feature spec
- The Capybara DSL
- Debugging feature specs
- Testing JavaScript interactions
- Headless drivers
- Waiting for JavaScript
- Summary
- Exercises
-
7. Testing the API with request specs
- Request specs versus feature specs
- Testing GET requests
- Testing POST requests
- Replacing controller specs with request specs
- Summary
- Exercise
-
8. Keeping specs DRY
- Support modules
-
Lazy-loading with
let - Shared contexts
- Custom matchers
- Aggregating failures
- Maintaining test readability
- Summary
- Exercise
-
9. Writing tests faster, and writing faster tests
- RSpec’s terse syntax
- Editor shortcuts
- Mocks and stubs
- Tags
- Remove unnecessary tests
- Run tests in parallel
- Take Rails out of the equation
- Summary
- Exercises
-
10. Testing the rest
- Testing file uploads
- Testing background workers
- Testing email delivery
- Testing web services
- Summary
- Exercises
-
11. Toward test-driven development
- Defining a feature
- From red to green
- Going outside-in
- The red-green-refactor cycle
- Summary
- Exercises
-
12. Parting advice
- Practice testing the small things
- Be aware of what you’re doing
- Short spikes are OK
- Write a little, test a little is also OK
- Try to write integration specs first
- Make time for testing
- Keep it simple
- Don’t revert to old habits!
- Use your tests to make your code better
- Sell others on the benefits of automated testing
- Keep practicing
- Goodbye, for now
-
Appendix A. Migrating to system specs
- The upgrade
- Generating new system specs
- Screenshots
- Database Cleaner
-
More testing resources for Rails
- RSpec
- Rails testing
- About Everyday Rails
- About the author
- Colophon
- Change log
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