Ruby-on-rails – RSpec: What is the difference between a feature and a request spec

rspecrspec-railsruby-on-rails

What is the conceptual difference between Rspec's feature specs and request specs?

From the feature spec docs:

Feature specs are high-level tests meant to exercise slices of functionality
through an application. They should drive the application only via its
external interface, usually web pages.

And for request specs:

Request specs provide a thin wrapper around Rails' integration tests, and are
designed to drive behavior through the full stack, including routing
(provided by Rails) and without stubbing (that's up to you).
With request specs, you can:

specify a single request

specify multiple requests across multiple controllers

specify multiple requests across multiple sessions

I know that feature specs use Capybara and request specs do not. But that hardly merits different concepts.

Best Answer

The conceptual difference is that you're usually testing a user story, and all interaction should be driven via the user interface. That's where Capybara comes in. A request spec is still testing the behavior of your application and doesn't have the expectation of readability that an acceptance test would have. So, feature is there for the improved syntax for acceptance tests.

Technical differences include request specs wrap Rails integration tests, whereas feature specs don't. This means with request specs you can use methods get, post, put, delete and assert against response. With feature specs you should drive all interaction through the browser and use methods like visit and assert against the page.

I'd recommend reading the feature_spec.feature in the rspec-rails source code on github. I hope this helps.

Related Solutions

Ruby-on-rails – Difference between string and text in rails

The difference relies in how the symbol is converted into its respective column type in query language.

with MySQL :string is mapped to VARCHAR(255)

https://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/active_record_migrations.html

:string |                   VARCHAR                | :limit => 1 to 255 (default = 255)  
:text   | TINYTEXT, TEXT, MEDIUMTEXT, or LONGTEXT2 | :limit => 1 to 4294967296 (default = 65536)

Reference:

https://hub.packtpub.com/working-rails-activerecord-migrations-models-scaffolding-and-database-completion/

When should each be used?

As a general rule of thumb, use :string for short text input (username, email, password, titles, etc.) and use :text for longer expected input such as descriptions, comment content, etc.

Ruby-on-rails – Difference between rake db:migrate db:reset and db:schema:load

db:migrate runs (single) migrations that have not run yet.
db:create creates the database
db:drop deletes the database
db:schema:load creates tables and columns within the existing database following schema.rb. This will delete existing data.
db:setup does db:create, db:schema:load, db:seed
db:reset does db:drop, db:setup
db:migrate:reset does db:drop, db:create, db:migrate

Typically, you would use db:migrate after having made changes to the schema via new migration files (this makes sense only if there is already data in the database). db:schema:load is used when you setup a new instance of your app.

I hope that helps.

UPDATE for rails 3.2.12:

I just checked the source and the dependencies are like this now:

db:create creates the database for the current env
db:create:all creates the databases for all envs
db:drop drops the database for the current env
db:drop:all drops the databases for all envs
db:migrate runs migrations for the current env that have not run yet
db:migrate:up runs one specific migration
db:migrate:down rolls back one specific migration
db:migrate:status shows current migration status
db:rollback rolls back the last migration
db:forward advances the current schema version to the next one
db:seed (only) runs the db/seed.rb file
db:schema:load loads the schema into the current env's database
db:schema:dump dumps the current env's schema (and seems to create the db as well)
db:setup runs db:schema:load, db:seed
db:reset runs db:drop db:setup
db:migrate:redo runs (db:migrate:down db:migrate:up) or (db:rollback db:migrate) depending on the specified migration
db:migrate:reset runs db:drop db:create db:migrate

For further information please have a look at https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/v3.2.12/activerecord/lib/active_record/railties/databases.rake (for Rails 3.2.x) and https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/v4.0.5/activerecord/lib/active_record/railties/databases.rake (for Rails 4.0.x)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ruby-on-rails – Difference between string and text in rails

Ruby-on-rails – Difference between rake db:migrate db:reset and db:schema:load

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