Book Image

Polished Ruby Programming

By : Jeremy Evans
5 (1)
Book Image

Polished Ruby Programming

5 (1)
By: Jeremy Evans

Overview of this book

Anyone striving to become an expert Ruby programmer needs to be able to write maintainable applications. Polished Ruby Programming will help you get better at designing scalable and robust Ruby programs, so that no matter how big the codebase grows, maintaining it will be a breeze. This book takes you on a journey through implementation approaches for many common programming situations, the trade-offs inherent in each approach, and why you may choose to use different approaches in different situations. You'll start by refreshing Ruby fundamentals, such as correctly using core classes, class and method design, variable usage, error handling, and code formatting. Then you'll move on to higher-level programming principles, such as library design, use of metaprogramming and domain-specific languages, and refactoring. Finally, you'll learn principles specific to web application development, such as how to choose a database and web framework, and how to use advanced security features. By the end of this Ruby programming book, you’ll be a well rounded web developer with a deep understanding of Ruby. While most code examples and principles discussed in the book apply to all Ruby versions, some examples and principles are specific to Ruby 3.0, the latest release at the time of publication.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
1
Section 1: Fundamental Ruby Programming Principles
8
Section 2: Ruby Library Programming Principles
17
Section 3: Ruby Web Programming Principles

Understanding the many levels of testing

There are many levels at which you can test code in Ruby. The lowest level of testing is unit testing, where you are testing the smallest possible amount of code in your library, such as a single method in a single class, with all dependencies of the method mocked or stubbed. The highest level of testing is some form of acceptance testing, which can be automated or manual. In a web application, manual acceptance testing can be just using the development version of the application in a browser and trying different features. Automated acceptance testing of web applications tries to imitate this by running an actual browser and programmatically controlling it by telling it which links to click on and which buttons to press.

There are multiple levels in between. Model testing runs at a higher level than unit testing, testing individual methods of objects, but with none of the method's dependencies mocked or stubbed. Integration testing involves...