RAA - quicktest/0.4.0

Summary

Quicktest - A utility for inlining ruby unit tests with the ruby code under test

Example

run with bin/quickspec

  class Foo
    def initialize
      @bar = true
    end
    def quicktest
      it "bar should be initialized to true" do
        @bar.should == true
      end
    end

    def self.hello arg
      "hello" + arg
    end
    def self.quicktest meth
      it "should prepend 'hello' to its argument" do
        meth["world"].should == 'hello world' # error - no space 'helloworld'
      end
    end
  end

Running quicktest on the source of this README file outputs the following:

  .F

  1)
  'Foo hello should prepend 'hello' to its argument' FAILED
  expected: "hello world",
       got: "helloworld" (using ==)
  ./README:22:in `quicktest'
  /home/greg/quicktest/lib/quicktest.rb:65:in `instance_eval'
  /home/greg/quicktest/lib/quicktest.rb:65:in `run_tests'

  Finished in 0.008338 seconds

  2 examples, 1 failure

Usage

To test a method, place another method called ‘quicktest’ immediately after it the quicktest method has one OPTIONAL argument:

• a method object for the method under test

run with

  spec -r quicktest file_to_test

There is a convenience script so that you can just run

  quickspec file_to_test

Author and License

Copyright © 2008 Greg Weber, gregweber.info Licensed under the MIT license

About

The typical test driven development workflow requires constant switching between the file containg the source code and the the file containg the tests. When creating code, it is much faster to be able to place tests immediately after the code you are writing. After the code has been written, it may be a good idea to move it to another file.

Quicktest is designed to support quick tests in a framework agnostic way. Currently, only an rspec testrunner is available, but it is trivial to write one for another testing framework.

Quicktest uses method tracing to know the method you are testing. By default the output of a failed test will show the object and method name.

Install

gem instlal quicktest

Source

browser

github.com/gregwebs/quicktest/tree/master

repository

git clone git://github.com/gregwebs/quicktest.git

Homepage

gregweber.info/projects/quicktest.html

RDoc documentation

quicktest.rubyforge.org/

Important Notes

• to test a module instance method, you must define an object that the module will be included into by defining the following in the module:

  def self.quicktest_include_into; Object end

• def quicktest will instantiate an object for the class you are testing, which gives a convenient referenct to self in the quicktest method. However, it calls new() without any parameters. If you need parameters for new(), you will have to use def self.quicktest and call new() yourself
• quicktest methods not working properly? if the class (or one of its ancestors) is overriding method tracing then including QuickTest::Tracer will fix it.

Unimportant Notes

production performance

leaving test code in with your production code is not necessarily a good idea, but there is almost no runtime overhead to doing so since ruby will not evaluate code in a method until the method is invoked. You can also put

  remove_method :quicktest

at the bottom of a class to completely remove the quicktest method

rationals

• tests for scripts

Definitely very useful for one file scripts, or any type of code that does not have a well established project home where the tests will be. You can distribute the tests with script so that anyone who wants to modify it can also modify the tests instead of assuming the original author did not write any. You can have a flow of development where a ‘quick and dirty’ script becomes well tested. Here is a shell function that tests the file before every run.

  function test_run () { quickspec $1 && $1 }

• documentation

Tests are a form of documentation. It can be argued that it is better to have all documentation include in the source

• efficient TDD and prototyping

When writing fresh code you now have the possibility to be directly next to the code under test without having to switch back and forth between files. When you are done writing the new code, you can easily pull all the quicktest methods out and into a spec file.

Origins

Quicktest came out of my dabbling in the D programming language, which allows you to place testing blocks inline with your source code

  unittest{
   ...
  }

Normally, these blocks are ignored, but if you compile with a different switch, they are linked in and ran at the beginning of your program. Originally, I made an exact copy of this, but among other things, it requires the placement of a line like

  (def unittest;end) if not defined? unittest

at the beginning of the file. It would be nice if Ruby had a similar construct built in to the language.