I.NFECTIO.US

I just spent the past several hours tracking down an issue with my tests. I use a combination of autotest from the ZenTest Suite and rails_rcov for my Rails testing. While testing using autotest, all my tests were passing just fine. I then went to check test-code coverage and all of a sudden I have a failing test.

* rake test:functionals:rcov - failed.
* rake test:functionals - failed
* ruby test/functional/clients_controller_test.rb - passed
* autotest - passed

So what gives? Basically, when running tests using the rake tasks, the test databases are recreated each time you run the task via rake db:test:clone. The real problem was that I was failed to load one of my fixtures in my functional test, but since the data existed from a previous test which used those fixtures, the tests passed. But when running the test from the rake task which resets all the tables, no fixture data existed in the database causing the difference in behavior between the two tools.

As always, if your tests are hokie, CHECK YOUR FIXTURES FIRST! Enjoy this tip.

Here's a quick way to follow your tests a little more closely in your test.log. In your test setup, add the following line:

def setup
  RAILS_DEFAULT_LOGGER.debug "\n\e[0;31mRUNNING TEST CASE: #{name}\e[m\n"
end

When you run your tests, you will now see something similar to this.

Twenty years ago, I learned about sex for the first time. All my friends said they were doing it, although I think most of them were full of it and just wanted to look cool. I didn't know much about sex back then but I'd read about it in The Joy of Sex and watched it on TV. There's something about actually doing it that you don't understand through those other mediums.

Learning about testing has been a very similar experience for me. I've known about it for awhile, all my programmer friends say they're doing it, and I've even read Test Driven Development By Example by Kent Beck. But doing it for the first time is a completely different experience. At first, I didn't know exactly what I was doing, I was aimlessly exploring the inputs and outputs, and before I knew it, I'd had my first testing orgasm. The tests I was writing discovered a serious bug in my code. That's when it clicked for me, really understanding what test driven development is about. If I had written the tests first, the specific bug they revealed wouldn't have existed in the first place.

Now that I've popped my testing cherry, I want to keep doing it, and much like my first sexual partner, Rails makes it easy. And when you get comfortable with your new partner, you can introduce great toys like ZenTest that will improve your experience.