unit tests and application.rb

rubyonrails-talk
1

Am fairly new to Rails so this may be an obvious question but I would appreciate any help I can get.

I am working on an existing application and trying to add some unit tests (there aren't any tests to date).

Firstly When I run a unit test I notice that it calls app/controller/ application.rb which is not something I was expecting. This is something I see happening even in a freshly generated rails project running the default generated unit tests. I am guessing this is correct behaviour but am curious as to why running a unit test on a model class results in application.rb being called.

Other than wanting to get a better understanding of Rails the other reason I am asking the question is that it is causing the tests to fail. This is because in application.rb someone has added the following code:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base

  layout "application"   include BasicAuth

  $currentsite = Site.find(1)   $sitefooter=$currentsite.footer   $sitename=$currentsite.name   $buttons=Button.find(:all, :order => "position")

   ....... end

There is no Site with an ID of 1 as it has been created. I have attempted to create a Sites fixture to solve this problem and referencing it in the unit test. This did not work so I tried adding it to the test_helper.rb class again this did not work. Looking at the stack trace the reason seems to be the order of execution.

In my unit test class I have the following

require File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/../test_helper'

class PollTest < ActiveSupport::TestCase

  fixture :sites

  # Replace this with your real tests.   def test_truth     assert true   end end

this calls test_helper.rb which in has the following lines

ENV["RAILS_ENV"] = "test" require File.expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/../config/ environment") require 'test_help'

class Test::Unit::TestCase

....... end

It is the third line which seems to result in application.rb being called. This happens before my fixtures are loaded and the test blows up.

I have included the static trace below for addition information:

/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.0.2/lib/active_record/ base.rb:1267:in `find_one': Couldn't find Site with ID=1 (ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound)   from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.0.2/lib/active_record/ base.rb:1250:in `find_from_ids'   from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.0.2/lib/active_record/ base.rb:504:in `find'   from /Users/rich/Documents/Dev/firework/app/controllers/ application.rb:14   from /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `gem_original_require'   from /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `require'   from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.0.2/lib/ active_support/dependencies.rb:496:in `require'   from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.0.2/lib/ active_support/dependencies.rb:342:in `new_constants_in'   from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.0.2/lib/ active_support/dependencies.rb:496:in `require'    ... 8 levels...   from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.0.2/lib/ active_support/dependencies.rb:496:in `require'   from ./test/unit/../test_helper.rb:3   from test/unit/poll_test.rb:1:in `require'   from test/unit/poll_test.rb:1

How can I load the fixtures first to ensure there is a Site by the time application.rb gets called. The other option is to re-factor application.rb. Is the code I have above bad practise?

Many thanks in advance for any help.

2

ma6rl wrote:

I am working on an existing application and trying to add some unit tests (there aren't any tests to date).

Sometimes a rewrite is in order. Start a new project, write tests-first, and each time a test fails for the correct reason, copy in a line of the old program.

Firstly When I run a unit test I notice that it calls app/controller/ application.rb which is not something I was expecting. This is something I see happening even in a freshly generated rails project running the default generated unit tests. I am guessing this is correct behaviour but am curious as to why running a unit test on a model class results in application.rb being called.

Firstly, "unit test" does not necessarily mean "model test". Both verbiages are just a Rails opinion, as a prod to help remind you to isolate and decouple tests and business logic.

I added this to my nearest application.rb...

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base    def initialize(*args)      raise 'wtf?'      super    end

...and found that not all tests call the application. The ones that do are using test/helper_testcase.rb:27: That's a system that tests helper files. Did you install such a system?

If you do the same experiment, do you get that file? What's on your stack trace?

Other than wanting to get a better understanding of Rails the other reason I am asking the question is that it is causing the tests to fail. This is because in application.rb someone has added the following code:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base

  layout "application"   include BasicAuth

  $currentsite = Site.find(1)   $sitefooter=$currentsite.footer   $sitename=$currentsite.name   $buttons=Button.find(:all, :order => "position")

Someone is writing Perl-style Ruby here. Take out as many $ as you can, and add another point to the argument that a rewrite might be necessary.

Next, all that code runs when the ApplicationController compiles, not when it first invokes. Look up "before_filter", and put your (crappy) startup code inside it. Then it will only invoke when someone fetches a page - not necessarily when every danged test runs!