Ashley, Thanks for your time on this, the reply does make sense, and I can see from an OO point of view that any particular object being (foo||bar) is equivalent to that object being baz. However with the dynamic nature of ruby we often don't know what object we are going to be dealing with in our tests/specs. Whilst a unit test will generally (always?) be aimed at a particular type, when implementing a plain text feature/story we are often working at a much higher level. In these cases the (foo || bar) construct could mean different types and a baz might not exist or be particularly easy to represent or formulate.
I can see that wanting this construct, could indicate a smell maybe a badly worded story - i.e. a conjunction step. All best Andrew 2008/11/4 Ashley Moran <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > On 4 Nov 2008, at 12:45, Andrew Premdas wrote: > > General case I'm thinking about is just testing that something should be >> one thing or another >> >> e.g x.should be(foo || bar) >> >> Haven't got a specific example at the moment apart from the blank one. >> What I'm thinking about is the syntax to say this in a spec, as I think >> there must be lots of times when having this sort of syntax would be useful. >> > > Hi Andrew > > I suspect that in general the concept of an object O being (foo || bar) > actually means there's a rule that makes your object baz instead. The > reason is that if you spec foo and bar independently, you double the number > of contexts for objects that depend on O. > > So this might not look to bad: > > describe MyObject do > before(:each) do > @o = MyObject.new > end > > it "should be foo or bar" do > @o.should be_foo_or_bar > end > end > > but it means everywhere else you're forced to duplicate that logic, eg: > > describe MyOtherObject do > describe "when its MyObject is foo" do > before(:each) do > o = mock(MyObject, :foo => true, :bar => false) > @oo = MyOtherObject.new(o) > end > it "should be faz" do > @oo.should be_faz > end > end > > describe "when its MyObject is bar" do > before(:each) do > o = mock(MyObject, :foo => false, :bar => true) > @oo = MyOtherObject.new(o) > end > it "should be faz" do > @oo.should be_faz > end > end > > describe "when its MyObject is neither foo nor bar" do > before(:each) do > o = mock(MyObject, :foo => false, :bar => false) > @oo = MyOtherObject.new(o) > end > it "should not be faz" do > @oo.should_not be_faz > end > end > end > > instead of just: > > describe MyOtherObject do > describe "when its MyObject is baz" do > before(:each) do > o = mock(MyObject, :baz => true) > @oo = MyOtherObject.new(o) > end > it "should be faz" do > @oo.should be_faz > end > end > > describe "when its MyObject is not baz" do > before(:each) do > o = mock(MyObject, :baz => false) > @oo = MyOtherObject.new(o) > end > it "should not be faz" do > @oo.should_not be_faz > end > end > end > > s/foo/nil/ > s/bar/empty/ > s/baz/blank/ > > This make sense? Sorry if it's a bit abstract, or has typos. I didn't > actually run that code, of course... > > I think in summary, two branches in your specs => you are violating Tell > Don't Ask (somewhere else) in your code. > > > Ashley > > -- > http://www.patchspace.co.uk/ > http://aviewfromafar.net/ > > > > _______________________________________________ > rspec-users mailing list > rspec-users@rubyforge.org > http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users >
_______________________________________________ rspec-users mailing list rspec-users@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users
