Last time I wrote about enforcing Liskov principle via tests. It was pretty simple to do in Minitest using just class inheritance. Sometimes, however, we can’t inherit test methods because the framework forces us to inherit from a test case class like:

  • ActiveSupport::TestCase
  • ActionDispatch::IntegrationTest

etc. In these cases we need to find some other way to share behavior and with Minitest’s design the answer is pretty simple - modules.

Example

Let’s write a simple data store library inspired by Moneta

class DataStore
  def initialize(adapter)
    @adapter = adapter
  end

  def get(key)
    @adapter.get(key)
  end

  def set(key, value)
    @adapter.set(key, value)
  end
end

Now let’s write an adapter:

class DataStore::InMemoryAdapter
  def initialize
    @hash = {}
  end

  def get(key)
    @hash[key]
  end

  def set(key, value)
    @hash[key] = value
  end
end

Let’s write a test for this. Knowing we will later reuse test methods, we start with a module:

module DataStore::AdapterTest
  def test_get_not_found
    assert_equal nil, @adapter.get(:invalid)
  end

  def test_set
    @adapter.set(:foo, 42)
    assert_equal 42, @adapter.get(:foo)
  end
end

Now the actual DataStore::InMemoryAdapter test (note, I’m using Minitest::Test which comes from minitest 5):

class DataStore::InMemoryAdapterTest < Minitest::Test 
  include DataStore::AdapterTest

  def setup
    @adapter = DataStore::InMemoryAdapter.new
  end
end

Running this we see that two examples have been “inherited” from the shared module:

~% ruby shared.rb
Run options: --seed 18221

# Running:

..

Finished in 0.001126s, 1776.1989 runs/s, 1776.1989 assertions/s.

2 runs, 2 assertions, 0 failures, 0 errors, 0 skips

With this foundation it’s pretty easy to add new adapters and we don’t really have to write new tests. Including shared module in the test is enough to have confidence that an adapter is conforming to an interface.

Let’s say we package the data store as a gem. We can ship the AdapterTest as an integral part of the gem distribution and let the users write their own application specific adapters. Just as Rails ships with ActionDsipatch::IntegrationTest.

minitest/spec

It’s actually pretty easy to use shared modules with minitest/spec. It’s simple because minitest/spec is really just a DSL on top of minitest/test (minitest/unit). A describe block creates a new Minitest::Test class, an it block defines a new test_ method. With this in mind we can start with our custom DSL like this:

module DataStore::AdapterSpec
  it "returns nil for an invalid key" do
    @adapter.get(:invalid).must_equal nil
  end

  it "can set a value" do
    @adapter.set(:foo, 42)
    @adapter.get(:foo).must_equal 42
  end
end

And the spec:

describe DataStore::InMemoryAdapter do
  include DataStore::AdapterSpec

  before do
    @adapter = DataStore::InMemoryAdapter.new
  end
end

Running this will result in error like:

<module:AdapterSpec>: undefined method 'it' for DataStore::AdapterSpec:Module (NoMethodError)

Let’s fix this; we basically have to implement Module#it for it to work:

class Module
  def it(description, &block)
    define_method "test_#{description}", &block
  end
end

Tests should be passing now.

I mentioned before that minitest/spec is just a DSL. In fact, there’s literally a Minitest::Spec::DSL module that Minitest::Spec is including. The DSL module is so good in fact that it can be included both in classes and in other modules:

class Module
  include Minitest::Spec::DSL
end

and it just works! We now can do stuff like:

module SomeTest
  before { "..." }
  after { "..." }

  let(:foo) { "..." }

  it "returns this" do
  end

  it "returns that" do
  end
end

etc.

The way Minitest::Spec::DSL is implemented is actually pretty simple. It doesn’t do anything special; it just defines a bunch of methods like setup, teardown, foo, test_returns_this etc. It means that after the “DSL” phase we end up with just a ruby module that we can include (or not), and nothing is evaluated until the module is included somewhere.

Conclusion

Minitest’s simple design allows us to extend it with standard tools we use in day to day ruby programming. We can use the same exact constructs like classes, modules, inheritance & mixins for both the production & test code. As a consequence of this design writing minitest extensions is imho pretty easy too!