From: Eric Hodel <drbrain@...7.net>
Date: 2006-05-17T03:36:00+09:00
Subject: Re: BDD and mocking objects

On May 15, 2006, at 3:42 PM, Pat Maddox wrote:

> The way I've done things though requires me to write the Movie  
> class before I even begin working on the Rental's behavior.  First  
> of all that sidetracks me for a bit while I write Movie and its  
> tests, and in general I think it leads to me writing more tightly  
> coupled code.

How does it make your code more coupled?

> It seems obvious to me now that when writing a unit test, I should
> mock out any relationships, so basically any object that's not the one
> I'm explicitly testing.  I'm sure there are exceptions, but does that
> seem like a good guideline to follow?

I typically only stub methods, typically overriding superclass  
methods in a subclass.

For example, I'll be using open-uri (which overrides Kernel#open) in  
my implementation then add a MyClass#open stub that allows me to  
provide the open behavior that open-uri gives.  I've done the same  
with #system and #`.

For me, mocks feel like a lot of typing for something I can achieve  
more simply by exploiting Ruby's dynamic language features.

-- 
Eric Hodel - drbrain@segment7.net - http://blog.segment7.net
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