defunkt's fakefs at master - GitHub

A fake filesystem. Use it in your tests.

Fixing Webrat after following an external link

When a Cucumber feature leaves your page through an external Link, Webrat has problems like "Could not find field: "E-mail" (Webrat::NotFoundError)" using your page afterwards. It will also have trouble following redirects.

Fix it with this step:

Given /^I am back on my page$/ do
  webrat_session.header("Host", "www.example.com")
end

MySQL replication how-to

This may be awkward to set up, but will work once you're done.

Fun facts:

  • In case of a connection loss the slave will try to reconnect to the master server and resume replication for the next 24 hours
  • If you want to use your slave as a "real" MySQL server, you basically need to switch off replication (STOP SLAVE; RESET SLAVE; and reset your my.cnf) and restart the MySQL daemon.

Master server configuration

  • Create replication user
    In the MySQL shell:
    CREATE USER 'replicator'@'%' IDENTI...
    

Cucumber Webrat steps

Most of these will not work in newer projects because these use the Capybara/Rack::Test combo in lieu of Webrat.

Find input fields

Then /^there should be a "([^"]+)" field$/ do |name|
  lambda { webrat.current_scope.send(:locate_field, name) }.should_not raise_error(Webrat::NotFoundError)
end

Then /^there should be no "([^"]+)" field$/ do |name|
  lambda { webrat.current_scope.send(:locate_field, name) }.should raise_error(Webrat::NotFoundError)
end

Find html content

Then /^I should see "([^\"]*)...

Aggregated RSpec/Cucumber test coverage with RCov

With defaults, RCov doesn't work the way you how you would like it to. To create a nice test coverage report, copy the attached file to lib/tasks/rcov.rake. After that rake rcov:all will run all RSpec examples and Cucumber features. The report will be written RAILS_ROOT/coverage/index.html.

Here is what the task does in detail:

  • Generates aggregated coverage of both RSpec and Cucumber
  • Works with Rails 2 and Rails 3
  • Reports for app/**/*.rb and nothing else
  • If called with an environment variable IGNORE_SHARED_TRAITS=true it ...

Better output for Cucumber

We built cucumber_spinner to have a progress bar for Cucumber features, which also outputs failing scenarios as soon as they fail.

Installation

gem install cucumber_spinner

Usage

cucumber --format CucumberSpinner::ProgressBarFormatter

If you use CucumberSpinner::CuriousProgressBarFormatter and a feature fails, the according page will show up in your browser.


Note that if you run your Cucumber tests using the [cuc](https://makandracards.com/makandra/1277-a-nicer-way-to-...

Test concurrent Ruby code

To test concurrent code, you will need to run multiple threads. Unfortunately, when you use blocking system calls (e.g. locks on the database), Ruby 1.8 threads won't work because system calls will block the whole interpreter.

Luckily you can use processes instead. fork spins off a new process, IO.pipe sends messages between processes, Process.exit! kills the current process. You will need to take care of ActiveRecord database connections.

Here is a full-fledged example:

describe Lock, '.acquire' do

  before :each do
  ...

Better Output for RSpec

rspec_spinner is a progress bar for RSpec which outputs failing examples as they happen (instead of all at the end).

Installation

gem install rspec_spinner

Usage

script/spec -r rspec_spinner -f RspecSpinner::Bar -c

To make a shortcut in your .bashrc

alias ss='script/spec -r rspec_spinner -f RspecSpinner::Bar -c'

There's also an alternate runner RSpecSpinner::Spinner which shows a spinner and the name of the current spec instead of a progress bar.

Concurrent Tests

Install gem and plugin

sudo gem install parallel
script/plugin install git://github.com/grosser/parallel_tests.git

Adapt config/database.yml

test:
  database: xxx_test<%= ENV['TEST_ENV_NUMBER'] %>

Create test databases

script/dbconsole -p
CREATE DATABASE `xxx_test2`;
...

Generate RSpec files

script/generate rspec

(you'll probably only let it overwrite files in script/)

Prepare test databases...

Parse XML or HTML with Nokogiri

To parse XML-documents, I recommend the gem nokogiri.

A few hints:

  • xml = Nokogiri::XML("<list><item>foo</item><item>bar</item></list>") parses an xml string. You can also call Nokogiri::HTML to be more liberal about accepting invalid XML.
  • xml / 'list item' returns all matching nodes; list item is used like a CSS selector
  • xml / './/list/item' also returns all matching nodes, but .//list/item is now an XPath selector
    • XPath seems to be triggered by a leading ....

Rails - Multi Language with Fast_Gettext

  • sudo gem install gettext --no-ri --no-rdoc
  • sudo gem install fast_gettext --no-ri --no-rdoc
  • script/plugin install git://github.com/grosser/gettext_i18n_rails.git (didn't work as gem)
  • environment.rb: see code example at the bottom
  • if this is your first translation: cp locale/app.pot locale/de/app.po for every locale you want to use
  • use method "_" like _('text') in your rails code
  • run rake gettext:find to let GetText find all translations used
  • translate messages in 'locale/de/app.po' (leave msgstr blank and ms...

Freeze (vendor, unpack) a single Ruby gem with and without Bundler

When you need to patch an existing gem, one way is to "vendor" the gem by copying it into the vendor/gems directory of your Rails project. You can then make any changes you require and Rails will use the vendored version of the gem after a server restart. Unfortunately you need to perform some additional steps to marry Rails and the copied gem. This notes describes what to do.

With Bundler

This is super-painful. If you just copy the gem to vendor/gems, Rails will complain:

Unpacked gem foolib in vendor/gems has no s...

Squashing several Git commits into a single commit

This note shows how to merge an ugly feature branch with multiple dirty WIP commits back into the master as one pretty commit.

Squashing commits with git rebase

What we are describing here will destroy commit history and can go wrong. For this reason, do the squashing on a separate branch:

git checkout -b squashed_feature

This way, if you screw up, you can go back to your original branch, make another branch for squashing and try again.

Tip

If you didn't make a backup branch and something ...

Show the current Git branch on your Bash prompt

Append this to your ~/.bashrc:

export PS1='\[\033[01;32m\]\h\[\033[01;34m\] \w\[\033[31m\]$(__git_ps1 "(%s)") \[\033[01;34m\]$\[\033[00m\] '

Reload the changes by saying

source ~/.bashrc

For some customized prompts that also show the current Git prompt, see the examples section at the bottom of our bash prompt customizing card.

Run a single test in Test::Unit

To run a single test file:

rake test:units TEST=test/unit/post_test.rb
rake test:functionals TEST=test/functional/posts_controller_test.rb
rake test:integration TEST=test/integration/admin_news_posts_test.rb

You may even run a single test method:

ruby -I test test/unit/post_test.rb -n "name of the test"
ruby -I test test/functional/posts_controller_test.rb -n test_name_of_the_test # underscored, prefixed with 'test_'

Or all tests matching a regular expression:

ruby -I test test/integration/admin_news_posts_test.r...

Configuring Git with .gitconfig

Basic configuration

Please keep this config simple. It should be a starting point for new developers learning Git.

[user]
  name = Your Name
  email = your.name@domain.com

[branch]
  sort = -committerdate
[color]
   ui = auto
[color "branch"]
  current = yellow reverse
  local = yellow
  remote = green
[color "diff"]
  whitespace = white reverse
  meta = blue reverse
  frag = blue reverse
  old = red
  new = green
[color "status"]
  added = green
  changed = yellow
  untracked = cyan
[interactive]
  singlekey = true # Do not requir...

Git for Subversion users

This is for people recovering from Subversion.

Get an existing from the server for the first time

git clone git@example.com:repositoryname

See what's changed

git status

Check in locally

git commit -m "good description"

Push local commits to the server

git push

Get and merge updates from the server

git pull

Stage a file for the next local commit

git add file

Stage all files for the next local commit

git add .

Create a new local branch and check it out

git checkout -b branchname

...

Test if a checkbox is checked in jQuery

jqueryElement.is(':checked')

Cerberus: Home

Cerberus is a lightweight and easy-to-use Continuous Builder software for Ruby. It could be run periodically from a scheduler and check if application tests are broken. In case of failed tests Cerberus sends notification to developers.

Railscheck project home page

This project is (or will be) a best effort semi-static verifier for your Ruby on Rails projects. Delivered as a Ruby gem it provides a shell command task "railscheck" that you can run against your Rails projects to test for a number of typical bugs, potential problems and inconsistencies.

Reflective Surface » Tests: Pragmatism or ideology?

The argument that using tests is a ideologic waster of time fails when one considers how it can help to insure architectural decisions.

7 Fresh and Simple Ways to Test Cross-Browser Compatibility | Freelance Folder

In this article we’ve listed 7 fresh and simple tools for cross-browser compatibility testing, tools that actually make this stuff pretty easy. Not only that, but every single one of these tools can be used for free.

The WHATWG Blog » Blog Archive » The longdesc lottery

It turned out that the test subject didn't know that longdesc even existed before the tester told him about it. Can you blame him?

The Bark Blog » Testing Rails Model Plugins

Unfortunately, by default plugin tests are pretty bland. They use the plain unit test suite supplied by Ruby, and not any of the extended Rails test framework. This will leave our plugin’s test classes with no access to fixtures, database.yml configuration, or any of those nice class auto-loading features.