Random Hacks: Tag Rails

Selenium on Rails, Reloaded: Client-Side Tests in Ruby

Eric Kidd — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 08:06:00 -0500

Like most Ruby on Rails developers, I write lots of test cases for my models and controllers. This lets me add new features quickly, without worrying about breakage: My test cases act as a safety net, warning me whenever existing code fails.

Sadly, it’s much harder to test client-side behavior. Sure, you know your controllers work, but what actually happens if a user clicks the Submit button? We need a better way to test the system end-to-end, including the actual JavaScript and web browsers.

This article shows how to combine Selenium, Selenium on Rails, and a custom patch to write client-side test cases in Ruby:

test.setup # Load fixtures
test.open :controller => 'customer',
          :action => 'list'
test.assert_title 'Customers'
test.click 'myLink', :wait => true
test.assert_title 'Customer: *'

These test cases actually run in your browser, loading pages and clicking links just as a user would. As the above example shows, you have full access to the Rails environment, including URL routing and configuration data.

Moving a blog to Typo

Eric Kidd — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 22:13:00 -0500

This weekend, I moved Random Hacks to Typo, a nifty Rails-based blogging system. Here’s what I did:

Set up my Mac for Rails development
Pointed Typo at MySQL
Created a custom theme
Wrote an article importer
Routed my old URLs to new locations
Wrote some custom sidebars
Configured Debian’s mod_fcgid

Now for the gruesome details.

Typo sidebars: Recent Comments and Tagged Articles

Eric Kidd — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 21:04:00 -0500

Here's two new plugins for Typo, the cool Rails-based blogging software. The first shows a list of recent comments. The second shows articles with a specific tag. (I use it to implement the "Recommended Reading" list in my sidebar.)

To install the plugins, simply unzip them in your Typo root directory, restart Typo, and take a look at the "Sidebar" tab in the admin screen.

These plugins were unbelievably simple to write. If you'd like to see how they work, keep reading.

Random Hacks is back online

Eric — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 00:00:00 -0400

I just recovered the contents of this site after a two-year hiatus. I'm going to try to dig up some other old stuff, too.

I should really rebuild this whole site using Ruby on Rails and some Ajax goodness. But that's going to have to wait until I ship some software at work and take care of other personal projects.