loot.md

title	description	keywords	layout
Riot loot	Recipes for common situations encountered when testing with Riot	ruby, testing, framework, riot, loot, recipes, cookbook	section

The Loot

I wanted to call this section "Booty"; you might call it "Recipes" or "Cookbook", but I don't. Anyways, "loot" goes with the theme of rioting and since Ruby is the Vegas of languages¹ we need to stay themed.

Adding context helper methods

If you find yourself writing similar assertions or even contexts within your application, feel free to include some new methods into Riot::Context that clean that duplication up. Yes, yes, simple example time. First you start with the redundant stuff:

{% highlight ruby %} context "Messages controller:" do hookup do # authenticate session(:user, {:email => "john@doe.com", :name => "John Doe"}) # assumes we're using rack-test end

context "retrieving list for logged in user" setup { get("/user/messages") } # ... end # retrieving list for logged in user

end # Messages controller

context "Followers controller:" do hookup do # authenticate session(:user, {:email => "jane@doe.com", :name => "John Doe"}) end

context "retrieving list for logged in user" setup { get("/user/followers") } # ... end # retrieving list for logged in user

end # Followers controller {% endhighlight %}

It'd be nice if we could just have an authenticate method to call in that hookup spot. Of course, we could write a helper to do some of it for us, but we want something more elegant than even that. This would be better:

{% highlight ruby %} context "Messages controller:" do authenticate("john@doe.com")

context "retrieving list for logged in user" setup { get("/user/messages") } # ... end # retrieving list for logged in user

end # Messages controller

context "Followers controller:" do authenticate("jane@doe.com")

context "retrieving list for logged in user" setup { get("/user/followers") } # ... end # retrieving list for logged in user

end # Followers controller {% endhighlight %}

Yep, better. Cleaner and very concise. Now, to make this happen you need to define the following in your teststrap.rb or some other library that's loaded in at runtime:

{% highlight ruby %} module SweetApp module RiotContext def authenticate(email) hookup do session(:user, {:email => email, :name => "John Doe"}) end end end # RiotContext end # SweetApp

Riot::Context.instance_eval { include SweetApp::RiotContext } {% endhighlight %}

Singleton-ish factory helpers

If you're like me, you like using helpers for all the reasons I've mentioned before. However, there are times when you want to have a helper that generates a new instance of something, but only one for the scope of the context.

{% highlight ruby %} context "Making some time" do helper(:right_now) { @right_now ||= Time.new }

helper(:hours_from_now) do |hours| (right_now + (hours * 3600)).strftime("%Y%m%d-%H%M") end

...

end # Making some time {% endhighlight %}

I see you pointing your finger and screaming "Instance variable ... instance variable ... ya ya ya!" Whatever, sue me. I get to say right_now everywhere else.

Footnotes

1. I have no idea what "the Vegas of languages" means, but it sounds awesome anyways. ↩