Testing routes with a prefix

Testing RSpec
1

Hi experts,

I am trying to test routing in my application, where all routes are
enclosed in a namespace like so:

scope ‘v1’ do
resource :blah end
collection do
something
end
end
end

Is there a clean way to set ‘v1’ somewhere and just write my routing
tests like so:

describe ‘routing for blah’ do
it ‘should invoke show when it receives /xyz’ do
{ :get => ‘/blah/xyz’}.should route_to(…)
end
end

i.e., I do not want to say
{ :get => ‘v1/blah/xyz’}.should route_to(…)

Thanks,
Radhesh

2

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 6:50 PM, Radhesh K.
[email protected]wrote:

end

[email protected]
http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users

You’re mapping absolute strings (URL’s) to your routes. Any string
manipulation would dilute the spec. In my opinion, this is not a case of
keeping things DRY.

3

On Mar 22, 2011, at 6:50 PM, Radhesh K. wrote:

end

i.e., I do not want to say
{ :get => ‘v1/blah/xyz’}.should route_to(…)

I don’t understand. The path ‘/blah/xyz’ does not route to (…), so why
would you write an example saying that it does?

Pat

4

Justin Ko wrote in post #988825:

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 6:50 PM, Radhesh K.
[email protected]wrote:

end

[email protected]
http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users

You’re mapping absolute strings (URL’s) to your routes. Any string
manipulation would dilute the spec. In my opinion, this is not a case of
keeping things DRY.

It’s clear that you have understood my intent: keep things DRY by
specifying the prefix once, and write tests as though the prefix is
implicitly specified.

But what do you mean by ‘dilute the spec’?
Do you think it might make the spec brittle?

Pat:

I just want to keep things DRY by specifying the ‘v1’ prefix once, so
the example would be ‘v1/…’, only ‘v1’ would be implicitly set in some
way.

Best,
Radhesh

5

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 10:16 AM, Radhesh K.
[email protected]wrote:

Routes are basically constants. By breaking this constant up (the
string) in
your spec, the value drops (because of clarity), in my opinion.

6

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 12:16 PM, Radhesh K. [email protected]
wrote:

You’re mapping absolute strings (URL’s) to your routes. Any string
manipulation would dilute the spec. In my opinion, this is not a case of
keeping things DRY.

It’s clear that you have understood my intent: keep things DRY by
specifying the prefix once, and write tests as though the prefix is
implicitly specified.

But what do you mean by ‘dilute the spec’?

It makes it hard to read. You have a new concept to understand: all
the routes being specified are not the routes being specified.

Do you think it might make the spec brittle?

Pat:

I just want to keep things DRY by specifying the ‘v1’ prefix once, so
the example would be ‘v1/…’, only ‘v1’ would be implicitly set in some
way.

What you propose would introduce an abstraction that will make it
harder to understand failures in order to save a few duplicate
keystrokes. This is not what DRY is about. See
artima - Orthogonality and the DRY Principle for some background on that.

Cheers,
David