Advanced Rails : Testing a Ruby on Rails Application [Updated 30th August 2009]

Thanks to DHH and his team, Rails guides you to create a well-tested application by actively generating default test cases and setting up scripts and tools to run 3 different kinds of tests namely, unit testing, functional testing and integration testing.

For example, when you use script/generate to create your models and controllers, Rails also generates skeletal test files for you to flesh out with tests for your apps.

1) Unit Testing deals with tests on models.
2) Controllers are tested via Functional Testing
3) Integration Testing focuses on the testing of the interation between controllers

Rails has a number of features that make it easy to test your application. In particular, Rails uses a separate runtime database dedicated to testing and can automatically populate the test database with fresh sample data (that you provide) before each test.

This is how you execute the tests :-

a) Test all units and functionals
rake test

b) Run tests for functionals
rake test:functionals

c) Run tests for integration
rake test:integration

d) Run tests for units
rake test:units

Testing within Aptana RadRails
1) Select the Rails Project that is to be tested
2) Click the Tests Icon on the ToolBar Nb. Y0u have a choice to select All Tests, Unit Tests, Functional Tests and Integration Tests
3) If you select Unit Tests, you should see a dialog window showing progress with an option to run in the background.


4) On competion of the test, you should see the following result :-


Available assertions for rake test:units

assert_kind_of Class, @var # same class
assert @var # not nil
assert_equal 1, @p.id # equality

@product.destroy
assert_raise(ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound) { Customer.find( @customer.id ) }

Available assertions for rake test:functional

a) Requests

get :action # a get request of the specificed action

get :action, :id => 1,
{ session_hash }, # optional session variables
{ flash_hash } # optional messages in the flash
post :action, :foo => { :value1 => 'abc', :value2 => '123' },
{ :user_id => 17 },
{ :message => 'success' }
get, post, put, delete, head
assert_response :success

# possible parameters are:
# :success
# :redirect
# :missing
# :error


b) Redirects
assert_redirected_to :action => :other_action
assert_redirected_to :controller => 'foo', :action => 'bar'
assert_redirected_to http://crm4web.com.my/

c) Rendered with Template
assert_template "post/index"

d) Variable Assignments
assert_nil assigns(:some_variable)
assert_not_nil assigns(:some_variable)
assert_equal 11, assigns(:posts).size

e) Rendering of Specific Tags
assert_tag :tag => 'body'
assert_tag :content => 'Rails Plugins'
assert_tag :tag => 'div', :attributes => { :class => 'index_list' }
assert_tag :tag => 'head', :parent => { :tag => 'body' }
assert_tag :tag => 'html', :child => { :tag => 'head' }
assert_tag :tag => 'body', :descendant => { :tag => 'div' }
assert_tag :tag => 'ul',
:children => { :count => 1..3,
:only => { :tag => 'li' } }





More to come...