mocked_fixtures

= mocked_fixtures

• Project page: http://mockedfixtures.rubyforge.org/
• Tickets: http://adzap.lighthouseapp.com/projects/16416-mocked_fixtures
• Contribute: http://github.com/adzap/mocked_fixtures
• Discuss: http://groups.google.com/group/mocked_fixtures
• Blog: http://duckpunching.com/mocked_fixtures

== DESCRIPTION:

Yes, lets laugh at those silly fixtures with their silly yaml or comma separated values! Ha ha ha! Don't they know how passe they are. All the cool kids are mocking and stubbing. Get with the times fixtures!

Well actually fixtures still have their place. Especially with the foxy fixtures extensions added to Rails 2.0, they are now much easier to use. Problem is the undesirable database overhead that comes with reloading your fixtures for every test. Also, in controller and view tests, the database layer is unnecessary and using mock objects for test isolation is often preferred.

This poses another challenge of the often tedious creation those mocks to return the values you need for tests much like you did for your fixtures. But what if you could reuse those fixtures as mocks where you don't need real ActiveRecord objects. Well thats where mocked_fixtures comes in.

This plugin helps by allowing you use your fixtures as disconnected mock objects which never touch the database when loaded or used. So you can now keep using those thoughtfully crafted fixtures in your controller and view tests but minus the database overhead.

A mocked fixture is a mock model object with all the model attributes stubbed out to return the values from the fixture if defined. If no fixture value was defined then a nil is returned for the attribute method as you would expect. There are no attribute setters defined on the object as they are left for you to do as necessary.

The attributes for each model are read from the schema.rb file to avoid any database access at all!

== FEATURES/PROBLEMS:

• Reuse your fixtures as mock model objects without database overhead
• Adds feature to supported mocking libraries to quickly create empty mocked model with all attributes methods stubbed out. Supported are Rspec, flexmock and mocha.
• Same familiar style of using regular fixtures
• Works with popular testing frameworks such as Rspec (with rspec-rails), shoulda and any testing library which uses good old test/unit as its base.

What it doesn't do:

• Touch the database. This means that the fixtures are not inserted in the tables, thats not what the plugin is for.
• Create mock objects with the attribute setters. Only reader methods.

Disclaimer: It is worth noting that the plugin is highly coupled to the Rails fixtures implementation and so would likely break with future changes to the fixtures API.

== SYNOPSIS:

To get going you installed as a gem you need to require the plugin at the top of your test_helper or spec_helper file. If you installed as a Rails plugin then you can skip that step.

If you are using test/unit then you need specify which mocking library you are using in your test_helper like so:

class Test::Unit::TestCase

# can be one of :flexmock or :mocha
self.mock_fixtures_with :flexmock

end

If you are using Rspec you need to set it in the configure block:

Spec::Runner.configure do |config|

# can be one of :rspec, :flexmock or :mocha
config.mock_fixtures_with :rspec

end

If you are using something other than the supported libraries then you get an error alerting the plugin can't be used with that library. You can then write you own interface to the plugin for that library if you want. See the files in lib/mocked_fixtures/mocks and the spec for mock fixture objects in spec/mock_factory_spec.rb.

On to the good stuff. Now if you have a Company model and fixture for the model like this

megacorp: name: Mega Corporation moto: Do Evil

Just like normal fixtures you declare which ones you want to use in your test or spec at the top

class MyTest < Test::Unit:TestCase mock_fixtures :companies

  def setup
	  @company = mock_companies(:megacorp)
  end

  def test_does_something
    assert_equal @company.moto, 'Do Evil'
  end

end

All the attributes will be stubbed to return the values from the fixture. The fixture is generated using the internal Rails fixtures class, so any of fixture tricks, such as association labels and automatically generated ids, will work.

If you want more than one fixture, then like normal fixtures you list the fixture keys to get back an array of the objects.

@companies = mock_companies(:megacorp, :bigstuff)

To quickly grab all of the fixtures you call use the :all option

@companies = mock_companies(:all)

You can also pass a block to the fixture accessor method to neatly customize the mock object for local use

@company = mock_companies(:megacorp) do |c| c.stub!(:some_method).and_return('special value') end

The block is called on all mock fixtures returned.

Like regular fixtures you can also declare global mock fixtures to pre-load for all your tests. Because the mock fixtures don't access the database it doesn't slow down the running of tests like global fixtures can.

To setup global mock fixtures, in your test_helper put:

class Test::Unit::TestCase

self.global_mock_fixtures = :companies

end

If you are using Rspec you need to set it in the configure block:

Spec::Runner.configure do |config|

config.global_mock_fixtures = :companies

end

You can also set the global to :all and all fixtures will be loaded as mocks. This can add some test startup time if you have a lot of fixtures but shouldn't slow down your tests when running at all. Might use a bit of memory though.

Thats all for now, so mock on!

NOTE: If you use MS SQL Server then you may need to apply a fix for this adapter to correctly dump primary keys when not named 'id'. I have a plugin to help with that and other minor adapter issues. To install it

./script/plugin install git://github.com/adzap/sqlserver_adapter_mods.git

Once installed you then need to do a dump. Um, keep your pants on, I mean a database dump with

rake db:schema:dump

Now the schema.rb file should be complete.

== REQUIREMENTS:

Rails 2.x

At least one of:

• Spec::Mock (included with Rspec)
• flexmock
• mocha

== INSTALL:

• sudo gem install mocked_fixtures

Or as a plugin

• ./script/plugin install git://github.com/adzap/mocked_fixtures.git

== LICENSE:

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2008 Adam Meehan

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.