Spec Your Widgets with rspec-apotomo!

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Open source is a great thing. I love the fact that you can simply ignore “feature requests by users”:http://groups.google.com/group/cells-and-apotomo/browse_thread/thread/6f50cb2ea5c62ff4 and anybody will give you a hard time about it – hey, *it’s _just_ open source*. Even better, people will start implementing things on their own if you make them wait long enough.

This is what happened with “Christian Höltje”:https://github.com/docwhat and “Jake Goulding”:https://github.com/shepmaster who initiated a first version of “rspec-apotomo”:https://github.com/apotonick/rspec-apotomo. Thank you, guys!

It’s now possible to *test your Apotomo widgets in isolation using RSpec*. Yay! Let’s see how that works.

h3. Using the Gem

Bundler is your friend, just add this one-liner to your Gemfile.

group :test do
  gem 'rspec-apotomo'
end

Whoops, this wasn’t a one-liner.

h3. I’m your Generator!

To create a sample spec, just run the generator shipped with the gem.

$ rails g rspec:widget comments
  create  spec/widgets/comments_widget_spec.rb

h3. Spec it!

Even the spec is pretty self-explanatory.

describe CommentsWidget do
  has_widgets do |root|
    root << widget(:comments)
  end
  
  it "should render :display" do
    render_widget(:comments).should == "No Comments!"
  end
end

All we have to do is setting up a widget tree with @#has_widgets@, just as know from controllers. The @#render_widget@ method does exactly the same as in your application views – it renders and returns the markup. Easy.

h3. Testing Events

Now, “Apotomo”:http://apotomo.de would be boring without its interactivity.

describe CommentsWidget do
  # ..
  it "should respond to :post events" do
    trigger(:post, :comments).should == ["Thanks!"]
  end
end

@#trigger@ first fires the event (first argument) from the source (second argument). It then returns _an array_ of all return values from widgets responding to that event.

We’re now waiting for proposals how to simplify testing multiple responses – maybe some comfy matcher? I’m excited.

Let us know what you think of this new gem.

BTW- Cells and Apotomo is a lot of work, if you like my gems “consider donating”:http://pledgie.com/campaigns/16068.
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