Using rails for testing a non-Rails web app

rubyonrails-talk
1

I have a question...right now I work at a place where we have implemented an automated test framework in Ruby-Watir-RSpec. The application is a Java-based web application. My question is...is there any value to setting up a Rails app as a "test environment" and then run tests against our Java web app? I don't know a ton about Rails (have gone through the sample app and read some of the documentation). I at this point am trying to figure out if in my situation deploying Rails would do anything for me, or if I will do just as well by sticking with my pure-Ruby test framework.

Thanks for any advice,

Jim

2

Jim Knowlton wrote:

I have a question...right now I work at a place where we have implemented an automated test framework in Ruby-Watir-RSpec. The application is a Java-based web application. My question is...is there any value to setting up a Rails app as a "test environment" and then run tests against our Java web app?

Probably not. What are you trying to get out of adding Rails?

Best,

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Rails will not help you test an other app

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Jim, this is a mere educated guess, but you may try experimenting with Cucumber test framework, run inside JRuby see http://wiki.github.com/aslakhellesoy/cucumber/jruby-and-java

I think this will be at least a bit more convenient for a Java app.

Best regards, Denis

5

Hi guys,

I recently tried using RSpec to test a Java application, and just wrote a tutorial on this topic describing my experiences: http://patshaughnessy.net/2009/6/25/taming-the-beast-using-jruby-and-rspec-to-test-a-j2ee-application

I definitely see a lot of value in using Ruby to test other languages; it seems to me that the Ruby community has done the most innovation recently on testing, and why not use the best tools to test your app, regardless of what it is?

Thanks for the link to the Cucumber wiki page... that was going to be my next step! - pat