Test Driving a Rails API - Part Two

• dotenv

  19 6,502 8.6 Ruby

  A Ruby gem to load environment variables from `.env`. (by bkeepers)

This is the second part of my Test Driving a Rails API series. In Part 1 we set up our development environment, generated a Rails API-only application, installed dotenv to easily store configuration values in the environment, and installed and configured PostgreSQL version 16 as our database.

• minitest

  10 3,242 8.0 Ruby

  minitest provides a complete suite of testing facilities supporting TDD, BDD, mocking, and benchmarking.

  

In this part, we’ll set up our testing environment so that we can test our Rails API using minitest with minitest/spec. We’ll look at the differences between traditional style unit tests and spec-style tests, or specs. I’ll demonstrate why you should use minitest-rails. We’ll look at using rack-test for testing our API. We’ll even create our own generator to generate API specs.

• InfluxDB

  www.influxdata.com sponsored

  Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.

  

• rspec-rails

  19 5,111 8.7 Ruby

  RSpec for Rails 6+

  

When starting a Rails project, you have a lot of decisions to make. Whether or not to write tests should not be one of them. The big decision is to use Minitest or Rspec. Both of those testing frameworks are great and provide everything you need to test a Rails application thoroughly.

• minitest-rails

  1 533 4.9 Ruby

  Minitest integration for Rails

  

How do we tell minitest/spec which test class to use? The tldr is to use the minitest-rails gem. I highly recommend adding the minitest-rails gem to your project. The gem does a lot to integrate the Rails testing ecosystem with Minitest, particularly spec-style tests. One primary benefit is that it configures specs to use ActiveSupport::TestCase or one of its subclasses as the spec’s test class, depending on what is passed describe.

• rack-test

  2 916 3.9 Ruby

  Rack::Test is a small, simple testing API for Rack apps.

  

In this part, we’ll set up our testing environment so that we can test our Rails API using minitest with minitest/spec. We’ll look at the differences between traditional style unit tests and spec-style tests, or specs. I’ll demonstrate why you should use minitest-rails. We’ll look at using rack-test for testing our API. We’ll even create our own generator to generate API specs.

• factory_bot_rails

  8 3,036 7.1 Gherkin

  Factory Bot ♥ Rails

  

While we’re at it, let's add a couple of other gems we’ll need for our test environment: factory_bot_rails is a fixtures replacement and generates test model instances. faker is handy for generating fake strings of data to be used in tests. Add those gems to the development and test group of your Gemfile:

• faker

  45 11,118 8.7 Ruby

  A library for generating fake data such as names, addresses, and phone numbers. (by faker-ruby)

  

While we’re at it, let's add a couple of other gems we’ll need for our test environment: factory_bot_rails is a fixtures replacement and generates test model instances. faker is handy for generating fake strings of data to be used in tests. Add those gems to the development and test group of your Gemfile:

• WorkOS

  workos.com sponsored

  The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

  

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