On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 7:59 AM, Tobias Weber <towb@gmx.net> wrote:
> Hi,
> my programm uses the HTTPClient gem to call a backend that was
> originally made for AJAX-without-the-X. Mainly it does POST without
> expecting any result.
>
> How do you test this?

Hello Tobias,

I've been through the same routine for an http client
(http://rufus.rubyforge.org/rufus-verbs). I've written a test server
based on Webrick just for the unit tests :

http://github.com/jmettraux/rufus-ve.../test/items.rb

(see the class ItemServer as a starting point).

It's then used in the startup/teadown of my unit tests :

http://github.com/jmettraux/rufus-ve...st/testbase.rb

Maybe that'll inspire you.


Webrick comes with Ruby, it's quite handy. You don't have to worry
about threads [for now], the server will run in its own. I'm sure
someone else will come with an even better piece of advice.


Freundliche Gruesse,

--
John Mettraux - http://jmettraux.wordpress.com

> I've been through the same routine for an http client
> (http://rufus.rubyforge.org/rufus-verbs). I've written a test server
> based on Webrick just for the unit tests :
>
> http://github.com/jmettraux/rufus-ve.../test/items.rb
>
> (see the class ItemServer as a starting point).
>
> It's then used in the startup/teadown of my unit tests :
>
> http://github.com/jmettraux/rufus-ve...st/testbase.rb
>
> Maybe that'll inspire you.

I have done it that way, and I have also used Mocha to simply make
the HTTP client magically return whatever result you want.

I have to recommend Mocha over mocking a server over a wire - no
matter how short that wire may be! You are not inventing a web
application stack yourself, so you just need a mock that lets you
focus on cleaning and refactoring your own code.