How do I stub things in MiniTest?

Question

Within my test I want to stub a canned response for any instance of a class.

It might look like something like:

Book.stubs(:title).any_instance().ret         


        

Answer 1

If you're interesting in simple stubbing without a mocking library, then it's easy enough to do this in Ruby:

class Book
  def avg_word_count_per_page
    arr = word_counts_per_page
    sum = arr.inject(0) { |s,n| s += n }
    len = arr.size
    sum.to_f / len
  end

  def word_counts_per_page
    # ... perhaps this is super time-consuming ...
  end
end

describe Book do
  describe '#avg_word_count_per_page' do
    it "returns the right thing" do
      book = Book.new
      # a stub is just a redefinition of the method, nothing more
      def book.word_counts_per_page; [1, 3, 5, 4, 8]; end
      book.avg_word_count_per_page.must_equal 4.2
    end
  end
end

If you want something more complicated like stubbing all instances of a class, then it is also easy enough to do, you just have to get a little creative:

class Book
  def self.find_all_short_and_unread
    repo = BookRepository.new
    repo.find_all_short_and_unread
  end
end

describe Book do
  describe '.find_all_short_unread' do
    before do
      # exploit Ruby's constant lookup mechanism
      # when BookRepository is referenced in Book.find_all_short_and_unread
      # then this class will be used instead of the real BookRepository
      Book.send(:const_set, BookRepository, fake_book_repository_class)
    end

    after do
      # clean up after ourselves so future tests will not be affected
      Book.send(:remove_const, :BookRepository)
    end

    let(:fake_book_repository_class) do
      Class.new(BookRepository)
    end

    it "returns the right thing" do 
      # Stub #initialize instead of .new so we have access to the
      # BookRepository instance
      fake_book_repository_class.send(:define_method, :initialize) do
        super
        def self.find_all_short_and_unread; [:book1, :book2]; end
      end
      Book.find_all_short_and_unread.must_equal [:book1, :book2]
    end
  end
end