Testing an application that integrates with an HTTP service can be tricky:
- Making a connection to another server is slow.
- Your tests can become dependent on data that lives outside the test suite.
- Going offline means you can’t run the tests.
- The service going down causes continuous integration to fail.
It may seem like a world of pain, but you’re not going to let a few HTTP requests get between you and your TDD, are you?
Story Time
Let’s say you’re making an internal dashboard for your site, which allows you to view key health metrics. Among other things, you want to display the current status of the build, so that you know whether or not it’s safe to deploy. Your build runs on a third party service, so you need to query their API.
From the Top
You start with an acceptance test:
feature 'health dashboard' do scenario 'view health dashboard' do create_passing_build sign_in_as_admin view_health_dashboard page.should have_passing_build end def create_passing_build FakeContinuousIntegration.stub_build_message(passing_build_message) end def view_health_dashboard visit '/admin/health_dashboard' end def have_passing_build have_content(passing_build_message) end def passing_build_message 'All 2,024 tests passed.' end end
The test immediately fails because of your missing fake, and you TDD your way into this simple class:
class FakeContinousIntegration def self.stub_build_message(message) @@build_message = message end end
Your testing loop leads to this controller action:
def show @latest_build_message = ContinousIntegration.latest_build_message end
Details Emerge
At this point, it’s time to drop down into a unit test. After a few cycles, you end up with this test:
describe ContinousIntegration, '.latest_build_message' do it 'parses the build message from the CI server' do message = 'Great success' response = { 'message' => message }.to_json Net::HTTP.stubs(get: response) result = ContinousIntegration.latest_build_message Net::HTTP.should have_received(:get).with('buildserver.com', '/latest') result.should == message end end
And the implementation emerges:
class ContinousIntegration HOST = 'buildserver.com' LATEST_BUILD_PATH = '/latest' def self.latest_build_message new(LATEST_BUILD_PATH).build_message end def initialize(path) @path = path end def build_message data['message'] end private def data @data ||= JSON.parse(download_build) end def download_build Net::HTTP.get(HOST, @path) end end
Connecting the Dots
With your unit test passing, you return to the integration test. At this point, you no longer receive any errors about missing constants or undefined methods. Instead, everything runs as you expect, but you’re getting a different build message: “All 126 tests passed.” Where did that come from? As the gears start turning, you realize that your test is fetching the actual build status.
There’s no reason to make an actual HTTP request in the test, so you reach for WebMock.
# in spec/support/fake_continuous_integration.rb stub_request(:any, /buildserver.com/).to_rack(FakeContinuousIntegration)
Now any
Net::HTTP requests to “buildserver.com” will route directly to your
fake, rather than actually opening a request. All that’s left is to flesh out
our fake a little more:
require 'sinatra/base' class FakeContinousIntegration < Sinatra::Base def self.stub_build_message(message) @@build_message = message end get '/latest' do content_type :json { 'message' => @@build_message }.to_json end end
Tests pass, page looks good. Time to ship.
Two Words: Java. Script
It doesn’t take long before somebody decides that it’s not a good idea to query your build server in the middle of a request. Luckily, you realize that your build server comes fully equipped with a JSONP API, so you can offload that request to the browser:
// in app/assets/javascripts function fetchBuildMessage(target) { $.ajax({ url: '', dataType: 'jsonp', success: function(response) { $(target).text(response.message); } }); } // in your .erb view fetchBuildMessage('#buildMessage');
Of course, your fake doesn’t implement this JSON endpoint, so you have to fix that:
get '/latest' do callback = params[:callback] data = { 'message' => @@build_message }.to_json "#{callback}(#{data})" end
You tag the scenario as
javascript and let Capybara do its magic, but even after fixing your fake, it’s regressed back to hitting the actual build server over HTTP. Testing this HTTP service was bad enough, and many developers shy away from testing their JavaScript, but the combination of the two is a formidable opponent. After coming this far, though, you’re ready to do what it takes.
What The World Needs Now Is Threads, More Threads
Tools like WebMock are great, but when testing JavaScript, it’s a seperate browser process that loads the page, and not your Ruby test process. That means that the request to your build server isn’t going through
Net::HTTP; the requests are coming from Firefox or
capybara-webkit, and those tools are gleefully unaware of your feeble attempts to reroute HTTP traffic. Fortunately, there are only two steps remaining towards the testing Holy Grail:
- The JavaScript is going to make an actual HTTP connection, so we need to have an actual HTTP server running somewhere with our fake.
- The JavaScript is talking to “buildserver.com,” which we don’t control, so we need to get it to use a configurable host.
We can use Capybara to solve the first issue. Instead of mounting the application using WebMock, we run it using
Capybara::Server:
class FakeContinousIntegration < Sinatra::Base def self.boot instance = new Capybara::Server.new(instance).tap { |server| server.boot } end # ... end
Next, we can put the CI host name in a constant. In most environments, this will be “buildserver.com”, but in the test environment, we can get the URL from the server we just spun up:
# config/environments/{development,staging,production}.rb CI_HOST = 'buildserver.com' # in spec/support/fake_continuous_integration.rb server = FakeContinuousIntegration.boot CI_HOST = [server.host, server.port].join(':')
Now we just need a parameter in our JavaScript function:
// in app/assets/javascripts function fetchBuildMessage(host, target) { $.ajax({ url: 'http://' + host + '/latest', dataType: 'jsonp', success: function(response) { $(target).text(response.message); } }); } // in your .erb view fetchBuildMessage('<%= CI_HOST %>', '#buildMessage');
Made it, ma! Top of the world!
