Derek Bender djbender

Introducing Test::Unit

Test::Unit is the fundamental testing library built into Ruby. It has a very light syntax but can be used to test systems of any complexity. Most recently, in Ruby 1.9, it has been reimplemented on top of the MiniTest library. But we'll check out Test::Unit as it exists in Ruby 1.8.

Concepts of Testing

Software testing is a complex art. Let's lay some of the groundwork:

Approaches to Testing

Managing the Flash

HTTP is a stateless protocol. The server, generally speaking, has no idea if request number 243 came from the same user as request number 236. That's beautiful and, at the same time, annoying.

In the context of web applications we frequently want to persist state between requests. That might mean something like a shopping cart that follows a user through the online store, but it can be as simple as a status message.

In modern applications users expect feedback. They click a delete link and they expect to no just see the item disappear, they'll expect a "Item Deleted" message. In Rails we handle these messages using the flash.

Flash as Hash

Sessions and Conversations

HTTP is a stateless protocol. Sessions allow us to chain multiple requests together into a conversation between client and server.

Sessions should be an option of last resort. If there's no where else that the data can possibly go to achieve the desired functionality, only then should it be stored in the session. Sessions can be vulnerable to security threats from third parties, malicious users, and can cause scaling problems.

That doesn't mean we can't use sessions, but we should only use them where necessary.

Adding, Accessing, and Removing Data

Render and Redirect

The normal controller/view flow is to display a view template corresponding to the current controller action, but sometimes we want to change that. We use render in a controller when we want to respond within the current request, and redirect_to when we want to spawn a new request.

Render

The render method is very overloaded in Rails. Most developers encounter it within the view template, using render :partial => 'form' or render @post.comments, but here we'll focus on usage within the controller.

	def output name=((default=true); "caius")
	puts "name: #{name.inspect}"
	puts "default: #{default.inspect}"
	end

	output
	# >> name: "caius"
	# >> default: true

	output "avdi"

	require 'sinatra'

	# before we process a route, we'll set the response as
	# plain text and set up an array of viable moves that
	# a player (and the computer) can perform
	before do
	content_type :txt
	@defeat = {rock: :scissors, paper: :rock, scissors: :paper}
	@throws = @defeat.keys
	end

	require 'rubygems'
	require 'bloops'

	b = Bloops.new
	b.tempo = 100
	sound = b.sound Bloops::SQUARE
	sound.volume = 0.5
	sound.sustain = 0.3
	sound.attack = 0.1
	sound.decay = 0.3

	gem 'rack-rewrite', '~> 1.0.0'
	require 'rack/rewrite'
	use Rack::Rewrite do
	r301 %r{^([^\.]*[^\/])$}, '$1/'
	r301 %r{^(.*\/)$}, '$1index.html'
	end

	use Rack::Static, :urls => ["/"], :root => Dir.pwd + '/output'

	# Empty app, should never be reached:

	require 'main'

	run Sinatra::Application