Testing Generators

Testing RSpec
1

Hi,

I have started writing my own generators, and I was wondering if anyone
had any suggestions for testing them.

I know I could just run the generator in a dummy application; write my
tests; and then copy the tests back into the generator. But that seems
backwards.

Any ideas?

Thanks

2

Scott T. wrote:

Why don’t you generate the specs when you generate the code?

That’s what I thought I’d have to do. The reason I’m reluctant to do it
is that either I need to write the real code first (and not tests
first). Or I need to rerun my generator every time I write a new test
(or write the code to make the test pass).

It seems awkward, but I guess it isn’t avoidable.

Thanks!

3

On Oct 7, 2008, at 6:02 AM, Pau C. wrote:

Any ideas?
Why don’t you generate the specs when you generate the code? Then,
after you’ve generated the code you tell if the specs are actually
working…

Scott

4

On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 5:24 PM, Pau C. [email protected] wrote:

Scott T. wrote:

Why don’t you generate the specs when you generate the code?

That’s what I thought I’d have to do. The reason I’m reluctant to do it
is that either I need to write the real code first (and not tests
first). Or I need to rerun my generator every time I write a new test
(or write the code to make the test pass).

If you know what code you’re trying to generate, you could use the
“gold master” approach, where you write a file with the code you want
to produce (the “gold master”) and use that as the source of expected
values created by the generator. Using regular expressions or tools
like Hpricot you can do this incrementally.

It’s not necessarily easy :slight_smile: But it does let you write tests first.

Cheers,
David