Getting Started With IronRuby And RSpec
BDD-style feature tests using IronRuby and RSpec/Cucumber
Example of using ironRubys mini_rspec library

Yeah, so game on I think. If you’re not sure why I’m so excited by the prospect of doing this I suggest you have a look at some BDD examples using RSpec and Cucumber. In my mind it’s light years ahead of what we can currently do with the .Net framework.

Whilst I really like the idea of actually doing this I do have some reservations:

• You still have to compile your .Net code so no enormous time savings.
• RSpec takes some time to get going as well, which is not a problem if you’re doing a large run but might be quite annoying otherwise.
• Have no idea how you’d be able to get test coverage reports (I’m sure some bright spark will get this working soon enough).
• Not exactly sure how debugging would work (stepping into your .Net code from an RSpec test).

On a side note and forgetting about the instability of it for a second I was really impressed with IronRuby and the CLR interop so, er.. *gulp* well done Microsoft!

I originally started by making an effort to write my tests method names as sentences starting with “should” (e.g. should_set_active_status_to_false_when_status_updated), but having used the “Given, When, Then” format for our automated acceptance tests I’ve been trying to move more in this direction.

For a start, I’ve being using the Visual Studio solution explorer to help. Previously tests would be organised something like this:

Which I have replaced with this:

As you can see I’m using folders and file names to help give the tests context. One major advantage of this is as the tests are less coupled to the implementation of the system under test (SUT) any changes to the implementation are less likely to require moving tests around so the intent remains intact. The other obvious advantage is the intended behaviour is much clearer.

The next thing to show you is the tests:

The nice thing here is the namespace is taken from the folder and the class name from the file name so I’m getting a nice convention (even if it is being obfuscated by C# scaffolding). In this example I’m still sticking to the “should” convention but below I went for something a bit different:

So this is a little different because the conditions are more specific. There’s another class for non view direct users so I split them up, partly so the test method names needn’t be so long but mainly because it’s easier to understand what’s going on. Purists may feel uncomfortable with my relative lack of a standardised syntax, but the most important thing to me is it’s easy to see what’s going on and beyond that I don’t particularly care how you say it.

What this really is is a feeble attempt to mimic the elegance you get from RSpec (which we’ve been using along with Cucumber & Watir to write our automated tests). I was thinking today whilst I was playing with this that I don’t just want to mimic RSpec I actually want write my unit tests using RSpec. Excitingly it looks like the DLR and IronRuby will make this possible. Up until now I’d been struggling to think of a really appropriate use of a dynamic language within the .Net context but not any more.