Got Example?

Don't forget to make use of the reserved (top- and second-level) domain names set aside by RFC 2606... especially if you find yourself writing something like:

result = @model.do_request('http://www.somebogusdomain.com')
result.code.should == 1001


# NOTE: www.somebogusdomain.com actually exists!

There's an IE PNG transparency bug fix as a plugin for jQuery. It looks fairly complete, with more coverage than many others out there and the usage is trivial (once installed):

<script type="text/javascript">
  $(document).ready(function(){ 
    $(document).pngFix(); 
  }); 
</script>

The major downside so far: it scales background images.

Rails Bug:

In a failing/rolled back transaction, those ActiveRecord objects that were created prior to the exception still have IDs and respond false to object_name.new_record? (which would seem to indicate that a record for the object has been saved).

For more info, here are a couple bug tickets.

In exploring options for RSpec testing of XML responses, one project decided a custom XPath matcher would do the trick nicely:

items = Item.find(:all)
get :index


response.body.should     have_nodes("//items/item", items.size)
response.body.should     have_xpath("//items/item[ position() = 1 and @id = '0001' ]")
response.body.should_not have_xpath("//bogus")

Some other possibilities:

• Hashes...

  items = Item.find(:all)
  get :index
  
  
  hash = Hash.from_xml(response.body)
  hash['ancestor']['parent']['items']['item'].size.should == items.size
  hash['ancestor']['parent']['items']['item'][0]['id'].should == '0001'
  hash['ancestor']['parent']['bogus'].should be_nil
  

• Hpricot...

  items = Item.find(:all)
  get :index
  
  
  doc = Hpricot(response.body)
  doc.search("//items/item").size.should == items.size
  doc.at("//items/item[ @id = '0001' ]").position.should == 1
  doc.at("//bogus").should be_nil
  

• assert_select from Rail's Test::Unit (using CSS-style selectors)...

  items = Item.find(:all)
  get :index
  
  
  assert_select("items > item", :count => 5)
  assert_select("items > item:nth-child(1)[id=?]", '0001')
  assert_select("bogus", false)
  

What are your favorite techniques for asserting XML/XPath?

Something to consider when test-driving controller code:

You're working with ActionController::TestResponse. So, response.success?, response.redirect?, etc. are available for you there (since they are defined on TestResponse), but not in your actual controllers. That is, things blow up if you try to use @response.success? in your application,

e.g. to determine whether or not to store the current URL and redirect there after a login.