Book Image

RSpec Essentials

By : Mani Tadayon
Book Image

RSpec Essentials

By: Mani Tadayon

Overview of this book

This book will teach you how to use RSpec to write high-value tests for real-world code. We start with the key concepts of the unit and testability, followed by hands-on exploration of key features. From the beginning, we learn how to integrate tests into the overall development process to help create high-quality code, avoiding the dangers of testing for its own sake. We build up sample applications and their corresponding tests step by step, from simple beginnings to more sophisticated versions that include databases and external web services. We devote three chapters to web applications with rich JavaScript user interfaces, building one from the ground up using behavior-driven development (BDD) and test-driven development (TDD). The code examples are detailed enough to be realistic while simple enough to be easily understood. Testing concepts, development methodologies, and engineering tradeoffs are discussed in detail as they arise. This approach is designed to foster the reader’s ability to make well-informed decisions on their own.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
RSpec Essentials
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

The pros and cons of BDD


This chapter has been very long. We've written tests at multiple levels, from the high-level black-box feature (which isn't a test, strictly speaking) to the functional API specs, to the model-level specs for Todo::TodoList. We could also have written functional and unit tests for our AngularJS code. Is this worth it? When does all this testing become too much?

The answer is not easy and will depend on the system under consideration. The benefits of BDD are the rigor and modularity that come from so many levels of specifications. However, there is a cost and the specs can start to get in the way. Also, as these specs grow in number, they can become difficult to maintain and actually start hindering efforts to change the code. This usually happens because not much time and effort are dedicated to the test code itself.

In my opinion, BDD is a valuable approach to software engineering but it isn't appropriate for most situations. Still, taking the outside-in approach...