rack-test-rest is an extension to rack-test that when combined with Test::Unit simplifies the process of unit testing properly designed RESTful API's.

Installation

$ gem install rack-test-rest

Use

rack-test-rest extends rack-test with a set of higher-level methods that perform CRUD operations against resources through a RESTful API that conforms to best practices and validates that they respond correctly. It's designed to be mixed into a subclass of Test::Unit::Testcase that is testing a specific resource e.g.:

  class GaugeTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
    include Rack::Test::Methods
    include Rack::Test::Rest

    def setup
      @rack_test_rest = {
        #:debug => true,
        :root_uri => "/v1/metrics",
        :resource => "gauges",
        :extension => ".json" #other possibilities ".xml", "_json",".html", etc
      }
    end

    def test_create
      create_resource(:name => "foo")
      create_resource(:code => 422, :name => "foo")
    end

    def test_read
      create_resource(:name => "foo")

      gauge = read_resource(:id => "foo")
      assert gauge['name'] == "foo"
    end

    def test_update
      create_resource(:name => "foo", :description => "bar")

      update_resource(:id => "foo", :description => "baz")

      gauge = read_resource(:id => "foo")
      assert gauge['description'] == "baz"
    end

    def test_delete
      create_resource(:name => "foo")
      delete_resource(:id => "foo")
      read_resource(:code => 404, :id => "foo")
    end

rack-test-rest exploits convention over configuration to minimize the amount of work required to test any particular resource. You need only specify :root_uri and :resource in your test setup (through the @rack_test_rest instance variable). These are combined to create either the URI for creating/indexing resources or the URI for a particular resource:

:root_uri + '/' + :resource + :extension
:root_uri + '/' + :resource + '/' + params[:id].to_s + :extension

Currently JSON is the only supported response Content-Type.

`create_resource(params={})`

Performs a POST to with any specified parameters to :root_uri/:resource:extension and ensures that it returns 201. Returns the string value found in the response's Location header.

`read_resource(params={})`

Performs a GET with any specified parameters and validates that it returns 200. If :id is specified the GET is performed against a singular resource i.e. :root_uri/:resource/:id:extension. In the absence of :id the GET is performed as an index operation against :root_uri/:resource:extension. Returns parsed JSON of the response body on a 200.

`update_resource(params={})`

Requires an :id parameter. Performs a PUT against :root_uri/:resource/:id:extension with any other specified parameters and asserts that it returns 204.

`delete_resource(params={})`

Requires an :id parameter. Performs a DELETE against :root_uri/:resource/:id:extension and asserts that it returns 204.

Testing invalid input

Any of the CRUD operations can be altered to check that invalid input is properly detected and returns the correct error code by specifying :code as a parameter e.g. create_resource(:code => 422, :name => duplicate_name) read_resource(:code => 404, :id => invalid_id)

Debugging

The point of unit tests is to surface and fix defects and/or regressions in your code in the lab rather than than in production. When your tests fail you can include :debug => true to instruct rack-rest-test to verbosely log to STDOUT the individual HTTP requests it's performing and the results of each.

Pagination

rack-test-rest also supports randomized tests for paginated resources assuming you follow the standard pagination scheme. All you need supply it with is a block it can use to generate unique parameters for populating the resources prior to pagination tests. You can specify :count to control how many records are created and paginated through (defaults to 512) and :length to specify the maximum number of resources that a single index operation may return (defaults to 100).

def test_gauge_pagination
  @db.run("DELETE FROM gauges")
  paginate_resource(){ |id| {:name => "foo_#{id}", :description => "gauge #{id}"} }
end

Contributions

Check out the latest master to make sure the feature hasn't been implemented or the bug hasn't been fixed yet
Check out the issue tracker to make sure someone already hasn't requested it and/or contributed it
Fork the project
Start a feature/bugfix branch
Commit and push until you are happy with your contribution
Please try not to mess with the Rakefile, version, or history. If you want to have your own version, or is otherwise necessary, that is fine, but please isolate to its own commit so I can cherry-pick around it.
Submit a pull request!

Installation

Use

create_resource(params={})

read_resource(params={})

update_resource(params={})

delete_resource(params={})