How would you test observers with rSpec in a Ruby on Rails application?

Question

Suppose you have an ActiveRecord::Observer in one of your Ruby on Rails applications - how do you test this observer with rSpec?

Answer 1

Disclaimer: I've never actually done this on a production site, but it looks like a reasonable way would be to use mock objects, should_receive and friends, and invoke methods on the observer directly

Given the following model and observer:

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
  def set_status( new_status )
    # do whatever
  end
end

class PersonObserver < ActiveRecord::Observer
  def after_save(person)
    person.set_status("aha!")
  end
end

I would write a spec like this (I ran it, and it passes)

describe PersonObserver do
  before :each do
    @person = stub_model(Person)
    @observer = PersonObserver.instance
  end

  it "should invoke after_save on the observed object" do
    @person.should_receive(:set_status).with("aha!")
    @observer.after_save(@person)
  end
end