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Project: Rspec-mocks

Publisher: rspec-pritesh

Dynamic classes

Verifying instance doubles do not support methods which the class reports to not exist
since an actual instance of the class would be required to verify against. This is commonly
the case when method_missing is used. ActiveRecord does this to define methods from
database columns. If the object has already been loaded you may consider using an
object_double, but that cannot work if you are testing in isolation.

These types of methods are supported at class level, since respond_to? can be queried
directly on the class.

Background
Given
a file named "lib/fake_active_record.rb" with: 
class FakeActiveRecord
  COLUMNS = %w[name email]

  def respond_to_missing?(method_name)
    COLUMNS.include?(method_name.to_s) || super
  end

  def method_missing(method_name, *args)
    if respond_to?(method_name)
      instance_variable_get("@#{method_name}")
    else
      super
    end
  end
end
Given
a file named "spec/user_spec.rb" with: 
require 'user'

RSpec.describe User do
  it 'can be doubled' do
    instance_double("User", :name => "Don")
  end
end
Scenarios
fails with method missing
Given
a file named "lib/user.rb" with: 
require 'fake_active_record'

class User < FakeActiveRecord
end
When
I run rspec spec/user_spec.rb
Then
the output should contain "1 example, 1 failure"
workaround with explict definitions
Given
a file named "lib/user.rb" with: 
require 'fake_active_record'

class User < FakeActiveRecord
  def name;  super end
  def email; super end
end
When
I run rspec spec/user_spec.rb
Then
the examples should all pass

Last published over 7 years ago by Pritesh Jain.