Correct way to spec partials

Hi everybody,

  1. Does anybody have full working example of how to test partial
    templates?

  2. What the correct place to test partials: controller or view spec? If
    controller correct place,
    should I use integrate_views?

  3. Is it true that expect_render is deprecated and I have to
    use should_receive(:render)

  4. How to test that partial’s locals hash is correct?

Thx

On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 8:07 PM, Oleksandr R. [email protected]
wrote:

Hi everybody,

  1. Does anybody have full working example of how to test partial templates?
  2. What the correct place to test partials: controller or view spec? If
    controller correct place,
    should I use integrate_views?

There are basically three options (from most granular to most coarse):

  1. view examples rendering the partial directly
  2. view examples rendering a template that includes the partial
  3. controller examples with integrate_views

In practice, I don’t think I ever go for #3, and the choice between #1
and #2 is largely context-dependent. In the end you want to (or
rather, I want you to :wink: ) be equally comfortable with all three
approaches, understand the pros and cons of each, and make a decision
on a case by case basis.

  1. Is it true that expect_render is deprecated and I have to
    use should_receive(:render)

Yes!

  1. How to test that partial’s locals hash is correct?

Do you mean that the partial gets the right hash? If so, that’s
something you would expect from the including template:

describe “people/edit” do
it “should render the _form partial” do
assigns[:groups] = mock(‘groups’)
template.should_receive(:render).with(:partial => “form”, :locals =>
{
:groups => assigns[:groups]
}
render “people/edit”
end
end

HTH,
David

On Oct 26, 4:49 am, “David C.” [email protected] wrote:

  1. view examples rendering a template that includes the partial
  2. controller examples with integrate_views

In practice, I don’t think I ever go for #3, and the choice between #1
and #2 is largely context-dependent. In the end you want to (or
rather, I want you to :wink: ) be equally comfortable with all three
approaches, understand the pros and cons of each, and make a decision
on a case by case basis.

Where can I find more information about how various contexts affect
the choice between #1 and #2?

I have a partial that is shared by two view templates and I only want
to test the partial once. So I created a new spec file with a describe
block for the partial. The partial is passed some locals and I would
like to test in my examples that these local variables are displayed
as expected. How would I go about setting these in the example so they
are available to the partial when it renders?

Thanks,
-Jesse

On 12 Nov 2008, at 00:51, Jesse C. wrote:

rather, I want you to :wink: ) be equally comfortable with all three
as expected. How would I go about setting these in the example so they
are available to the partial when it renders?

What you can do is call the template from the example and set up a
stub for each of the locals. So if I have a partial like this:

 <%= name %> makes cheese for <%= friend_name %>

Then in the example, you can do this:

 describe "when there's a name and a friend name"
     before(:each) do
  template.stub!(:name).and_return("Mike")
         template.stub!(:friend_name).and_return("Susan")
     end
 end

Make sense?

In order to keep your view specs from becoming too brittle, I would
strongly suggest that you ‘stub out’ the rendering of the shared
partial in the specs for the two view templates that use the partial.
I usually do this by making a special helper method for rendering the
partial:

<%= for relationship in relationships %>
    <%= render_relationship(relationship) %>
<% end %>

This makes is easy to stub out the rendering in your main view
templates’ specs:

 before(:each) do
     template.stub!(:render_relationship)
 end

Of course you’ll really want a Cucumber test that makes sure the whole
stack fits together (locals are passed through with the correct names)
but I’d suggest that’s a much more flexible solution than tying your
view specs together.

HTH,
Matt

On Nov 12, 2008, at 12:11 AM, Matt W. wrote:

should I use integrate_views?
and #2 is largely context-dependent. In the end you want to (or
describe

Then in the example, you can do this:

describe “when there’s a name and a friend name”
before(:each) do
template.stub!(:name).and_return(“Mike”)
template.stub!(:friend_name).and_return(“Susan”)
end
end

Make sense?

Yep. Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.

than tying your view specs together.

I am stubbing out the rendering of the partial in the other view
specs. Although, I am just using: ‘template.stub!(:render)’ in
expectations describing other portions of the view and then I have an
expectation that uses ‘should_receive’ to make sure the partial is
getting called with the expected locals values.

Learning how to use Cucumber is on my list of things to do…