Testing rake tasks with rspec

[Nicholas Wieland]

Hi everyone, I'm having a very strange problem testing some rake tasks with rspec. I think I'm doing something terribly wrong here, and that's why rspec is having one of the weirdest behaviours I've ever seen...

Here is one of my rake tasks:

  namespace :rivendell do

    desc 'Outputs the current version of Rivendell'

    task version: :environment do

      puts Rivendell::VERSION

    end

  end

And here is my spec (paths are alright):

  describe 'Rakefile' do

    before :all do

      Rake.application.rake_require '../tasks/rivendell'

      Rake::Task.define_task :environment    

    end

    describe 'rivendell::version' do

      # This doesn't appear to work

      let :run_rake_task do

        Rake::Task["rivendell::version"].reenable

        Rake.application.invoke_task "rivendell::version"

      end

      it 'should display the right version' do

        Rivendell.should_receive('VERSION').and_return('0.1')

        run_rake_task

      end

    end

  end

With this version, all tests pass (I invoke it directly with the rspec command).

The problem is, if I change the should_receive call to should_receive('sdjkakja') it works as well, this suggests me I'm not testing my code but some kind of weird double I've created (no idea how, where or when).

I already posted on ruby-lang, I thought this place would be more appropriate.

TIA,

  ngw

[Myron Marston]

`Rivendell.should_receive(:VERSION)` will never work because `VERSION` is not a message `Rivendell` responds to.  VERSION is a constant nested under the `Rivendell` constant. RSpec has support for stubbing constants but it uses a different API:

https://relishapp.com/rspec/rspec-mocks/v/3-0/docs/mutating-constants

HTH,

Myron 

[Nicholas Wieland]

Hi Myron, thanks for your answer, I didn't know. So if it doesn't answer to that message, why it doesn't fail? Honestly I'm not sure I get it.

Here is another rspec that should cover a "real" call to a "real" method:

  describe 'rivendell::get_account' do

    let :run_rake_task do

      Rake::Task["rivendell::get_account"].reenable

      Rake.application.invoke_task "rivendell::get_account"

    end

    it 'should generate an api key' do

      Rivendell::Models::Apikey.should_receive(:create)

      run_rake_task

    end

  end

 

This is the rake task:

  desc 'Setup a user account'

  task get_account: :environment do

    begin

      if ENV['TOKEN'] && ENV['SECRET']

        api_key = Rivendell::Models::Apikey.create(token: ENV['TOKEN'], secret: ENV['SECRET'])

      else

        api_key = Rivendell::Models::Apikey.create

      end

      puts "Account created: \n\tTOKEN: #{api_key.token} \n\tSECRET: #{api_key.secret}"

    rescue => msg

      puts "Something didn't work as expected: \n\t#{msg}"

    end

  end

If I change the call to Rivendell::Models::Apikey.should_receive(:sdhfkjshd) it still passes. Seems to me whatever I do

all my specs pass, which is great for my ego, not so much for my code ;)

TIA,

  ngw