On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 10:17 AM, Ben Mabey <b...@benmabey.com> wrote: > David Chelimsky wrote: >> >> I highly recommend this blog post by Jay Fields: >> http://blog.jayfields.com/2009/02/thoughts-on-developer-testing.html >> >> Cheers, >> David >> _______________________________________________ >> rspec-users mailing list >> rspec-users@rubyforge.org >> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users >> > > Great post. Very down to earth and realistic. > > This post raised a question for me. Jay talks about how the pattern Object > Mother gave way to Test Data Builders. I use Fixjour ("Word to your object > mother")[1], and other similar projects in my apps to provide a set of sane > default attributes for my models. You can then easily override those > defaults by passing in a hash with the values that you need for the test. > After reading Nat's post about Object Mother vs Test Data Builders[2] , I > have come to the conclusion that the "Object Mother" libs that are popular > in ruby land (i.e. Fixjour, Factory Girl) are really more in line with the > Test Data Builder pattern. Does everyone agree with this conclusion or am I > missing something? It may be that I just use it differently, but according > to Nat's post Test Builders provide a sane set of defaults that you can then > explicitly override like so: > > Invoice invoiceWithNoPostcode = new InvoiceBuilder() > .withRecipient(new RecipientBuilder() > .withAddress(new AddressBuilder() > .withNoPostcode() > .build()) > .build()) > .build(); > > Well.. this looks a lot like what I do in Ruby (but a lot more verbose): > > invoice_with_no_postcode = new_invoice(:recipient => new_recipient(:address > => new_address(:postcode => nil))) > > Nat points out that problems with Object Mother arise when people start > adding factory methods to deal with the edge cases, such as > ObjectMother.new_invoice_with_no_postal_code. I totally agree that this > would be a problem since such abstraction results in hard to follow tests > (this is why I hate fixtures actually). From the projects I have worked on > I haven't seen the Object Mother libs abused this way and they are used more > like a Test Data Builder. The only difference I see is in implementation, > meaning the ruby libs tend to group all the factory methods on one object or > module just like Object Mother, while the pattern Nat describes uses a > separate builder class for each object. I think this is really just details > though and results from Ruby's differences from Java. > > Any thoughts? Are Ruby's Object Mothers really Test Data Builders?
I'd say yes. We also have a naming conflict in terms of test categories. The definitions as I understand them are: * Unit tests test units - generally one object at a time, or perhaps more than one object that live within a single component, but never crossing the component/layer boundary. * Integration tests test integration - between two or more components. * Functional tests test functionality - of the application as a whole (more like cucumber scenarios) By these definitions: * what Rails calls unit tests are really integration tests (model and database layers) * what Rails calls functional tests are really bigger integration tests (controller + model + database) * what Rails calls integration tests are really functional tests (scenarios that take you through routing) Confused? Me too. Cheers, David > -Ben > > 1. http://github.com/nakajima/fixjour/tree/master > 2. http://nat.truemesh.com/archives/000714.html > _______________________________________________ > 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
