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Using Rspec to test Ruby Modules Supporting tagline

Ruby modules are used to group together methods, classes and contants. Ruby Docs

Here’s an example Module

module MyLovelyModule
  def my_lovely_method
    save_world
  end
end

This module attempts to save the world. No doubt a huge undertaking and needless to say, it needs to be thoroughly tested! A Module cannot be unit tested in the same way as you’d test a class, in the sense that you cannot instantiate a Module. This is by design as Modules are meant to be mixed into classes. So if you want to test this module in isolation you can create a dummy class, include this module in that dummy class and thus test its functionality.

Here’s an example using Rspec.

describe MyLovelyModule do
  class DummyClass
  end

  before(:all) do
    @dummy = DummyClass.new
    @dummy.extend MyLovelyModule
  end

  describe "my_lovely_method" do
    it "saves the world" do
      expect {
        @dummy.my_lovely_method
      }.to raise_error MeltDownException
    end
  end
end

So within the describe block we create the dummy class. It doesn’t do much, but in the before hook it extends the MyLovelyModule module and gets it’s functionality mixed in. And so we can use that dummy class to spec the modules functionality.

Published

02 February 2012

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