TL;DR In blueprints, always wrap associations in blocks.

# Broken
Task.blueprint(:vacation) do
  project Project.make(:vacation)
  hours 8
  accounting_method 'none'
end

# Correct
Task.blueprint(:vacation) do
  project { Project.make(:vacation) }
  hours 8
  accounting_method 'none'
end

Without the block, Project.make will only run once when the blueprint is parsed (usually when RSpec is loaded), which is not what you want.

In Cucumber, scenario outlines help avoiding tests that are basically the same, except for a few variables (such as different inputs). So far, nothing new.

The problem

Now what if your test should (or should not) do something, like filling in a field only for some tests?

    Scenario Outline: ...
      When I open the form
        And I fill in "Name" with "<name>" # <= we want to do this only occasionally
      Then everybody should be happy
      
    Examples:
      | name  |
      | Alice |
      | Bob   |

You could o...

Previously the assets group existed to avoid unintended compilation-on-demand in production. As Rails 4 doesn't behave like that anymore, it made sense to remove the asset group.

While RSpec 1 and 2 decided that specs inside spec/model are model specs, and those inside spec/features are feature specs (and so on), RSpec 3 will no longer do that by default.

This will result in errors such as missing routing helpers, etc.

There are 2 ways to fix this:

• Explicitly set the type on each spec. For example:

  describe '...', type: 'feature' do
    # ...
  end
  

• Add this to your spec_helper.rb (inside the RSpec.configure block) to restore the old behavior:

  ...

When you don't only have a favicon.ico in your project but also PNGs of different sizes and backgrounds, you should test if all those files are actually reachable.

Here are a few selectors to get you started:

    'link[rel~="icon"]' # regular ones, matches "shortcut icon" and "icon"
    'link[rel="apple-touch-icon"]' # iOS
    'meta[content][name="msapplication-TileImage"]' # IE11
    'meta[content][name^="msapplication-square"]' # IE11

A s...

Spreewald 1.1.0 drops the be_true and be_false matchers in order to be RSpec 3 and Ruby 2 compatible. For backward compatibility, these matchers are replaced with == true and == false.

Note the slightly more changed semantics of the update.

Safari on iOS accepts an apple-touch-icon favicon that is used for stuff like desktop bookmarks. Always define a solid background color for them.

If you use PNGs with a transparent background, Safari will use just set a black background on your pretty icon. This is almost never what you want.
You can fix that by applying a white background via ImageMagick like this:

convert a...

Spreewald now has a spreewald binary that lists all available steps, optionally filtering them. Example:

$> spreewald

# All Spreewald steps
Given I am on ...
... long list

$> spreewald check

# All Spreewald steps containing 'check'
When I check "..."
When I uncheck "..."
Then the "..." checkbox( within ...)? should be checked
Then the "..." checkbox( within ...)? should not be checked
Then the radio button "..." should( not)? be (checked|selected)

The debugger gem does not seem to be properly working on Ruby 2. Use byebug instead!

Byebug is a simple to use, feature rich debugger for Ruby 2. It uses the new TracePoint API for execution control and the new Debug Inspector API for call stack navigation, so it doesn't depend on internal core sources. It's developed as a C extension, so it's fast. And it has a full test suite so it's reliable. Note that byebug works only for ruby 2.0.0 or newer. For...

The attached RSpec matcher allows for comfortably testing delegation.

Examples

describe Post do
  it { should delegate(:name).to(:author).with_prefix } # post.author_name
  it { should delegate(:month).to(:created_at) }
  it { should delegate(:year).to(:created_at) }
end

Credits go to txus. See the attached link for an RSpec 2+ version.

Skype has been updated to 4.3 on Linux. This fixes group chat issues with non-linux clients.

If you have previously installed skype via ubuntu packages, you need to remove those fist via

sudo apt-get remove skype skype-bin

Note

Try to install the 32 bit version. In serveral cases this was the way that worked out.

Grab the installer here:

If your requests blow up in Ruby or CURL, the server you're connecting to might only support requests with older SSL/TLS versions.

You might get an error like: OpenSSL::SSL::SSLError: SSL_connect SYSCALL returned=5 errno=0 state=unknown state

SSL Server Test

This SSL Server Test can help finding out which SSL/TLS versions the server can handle.

Ruby

In Ruby, you can teach Net::HTTP to use a specific SSL/TLS version.

uri = URI.parse(url)

ssl_options = {
   use_ssl: true,
   ssl_version...

So you're getting an error message like the following, although your Gemfile lists shoulda-matchers and it has always worked:

NoMethodError:
  undefined method `allow_value' for #<RSpec::ExampleGroups::Person::Age:0x007feb239fa6a8>

This is due to Rails 4.1 (specifically, Spring) revealing a weak point of shoulda-matchers -- jonleighton explains why.

Solution

The solution is to follow [the gem's installation guide](https://github.com/thoughtbot/sh...

Aruba is an extension to Cucumber that helps integration-testing command line tools.

When your tests involve a Rails test application, your tool's Bundler environment will shadow that of the test application. To fix this, just call unset_bundler_env_vars in a Cucumber Before block.

Previously suggested solution

Put the snippet below into your tool's features/support/env.rb -- now any command run through Aruba (e.g. via #run_simple) will have a clean Bundler envir...

An all-in-approach to fix the problem of pending AJAX requests dying in the browser when the server ends a test or switches scenarios.

We were able to work around this issue in most projects by doing this instead:

After '@javascript' do
  step 'I wait for the page to load'
end

Using this gem, whenever a Capybara test in Cucumber, Rspec or Minitest fails, the HTML for the failed page and a screenshot (when using capybara-webkit, Selenium or poltergeist) is saved into $APPLICATION_ROOT/tmp/capybara.

Link via Binärgewitter Podcast (German).

As you know, assignable_values does not invalidate a record even when an attribute value becomes unassignable. See this example about songs:

class Song < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :artist
  belongs_to :record_label

  assignable_values_for :artist do
    record_label.artists
  end
end

We'll create two record labels with one artist each and create a song for one artist. When we change the song's record label, its artist is still valid.

makandra = RecordLabel.create! name: 'makandra records'
dominik...

Travis CI is a free continuous integration testing service. However, it is really fragile and will break more than it will work.

If you choose to use it anyway, learn the lessons we already learnt:

Use a compatible Rubygems for Rails 2.3 on Ruby 1.8.7

Ruby 1.8.7 is not compatible with current Rubygems versions (> 2.0). Runnig rvm rubygems latest-1.8 --force will fix this and install Rubygems version 1.8.29.

To make Travis CI do this, add `before_script: rvm rubygems latest-1....

A little-known feature of modern Regexp engines that help when optimizing a pattern that will be matched against long strings:

An atomic group is a group that, when the regex engine exits from it, automatically throws away all backtracking positions remembered by any tokens inside the group.

RSpec 3.0 deprecates the :should way of writing specs for expecting things to happen.

However, if you have tests you cannot change (e.g. because they are inside a gem, spanning multiple versions of Rails and RSpec), you can explicitly allow the deprecated syntax.

Fix

Inside spec/spec_helpber.rb, set rspec-expectations’ and/or rspec-mocks’ syntax as following:

RSpec.configure do |config|
  # ...
  config.mock_with :rspec do |c|
    c.syntax = [:should, :expect]
 ...

Sometimes you're getting an ActiveSupport deprecation warning that you cannot or don't want to fix. In these cases, it might be okay to silence some specific warnings. Add this to your initializers, or require it in your tests:

silenced = [
  /Not considered a useful test/,
  /use: should(_not)? have_sent_email/,
] # list of warnings you want to silence

silenced_expr = Regexp.new(silenced.join('|'))

ActiveSupport::Deprecation.behavior = lambda do |msg, stack|
  unless msg =~ silenced_expr
    ActiveSupport::Deprecation::DEFAULT_BEHAVI...

Warnings like those below may originate from rspec or shoulda-matchers or other gems that have not updated yet to the new MiniTest API.

One

Warning: you should require 'minitest/autorun' instead.
Warning: or add 'gem "minitest"' before 'require "minitest/autorun"'
# (backtrace)

Solution: Add gem 'minitest' to your Gemfile, before any rspec gem.

Another

MiniTest::Unit::TestCase is now Minitest::Test. From /Users/makandra/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p484/lib/ruby/1.9.1/tes...

SimpleForm is a great approach to simplifying your forms, and it comes with lots of well-defined input types. However, the :grouped_select type seems to be overly complicated for most use cases.

Example

Consider this example, from the documentation:

form.input :country_id, collection: @continents,
  as: :grouped_select, group_method: :countries

While that looks easy enough at a first glance, look closer. The example passes @continents for a country_id.\
SimpleForm actua...