Spiker

Spiker helps you validate your ideas under test. It can also be a basic educational tool, giving the learner a minimal framework to start writing and testing their Ruby code.

Installation

Install it directly:

$ gem install spiker

Usage

In the terminal, change directory to someplace where you want to collect your spikes:

$ cd ~/spikes

Then, create a new spike:

$ spiker simple my_spike
$ cd my_spike

Using the "simple" formula, Spiker will create an app.rb file, a Gemfile, a Guardfile and an .env file for configuration, to be read by the dotenv gem. The app.rb file will contain boilerplate for both Minitest and a Ruby class in the same file:

require 'dotenv/load'
require 'minitest'
require 'minitest/autorun'
require 'minitest/reporters'

Minitest::Reporters.use!

class MySpikeTest < Minitest::Test
  def test_name
    assert_equal "Fred", MySpike.new(name: "Fred").name
  end

  def test_default_env_value
    assert_equal "test", ENV["TEST_VALUE"]
  end
end

class MySpike
  attr_accessor :name
  def initialize(name:)
    @name = name
  end
end

From here, the user should be able to start Guard and immediately begin development in a red-green fashion.

Types of Spikes

The simple option shown above puts the code and the tests together in a single file, which can be useful in a number of circumstances. Similar to the simple option, the given option puts the code and tests in the same file but offers the user the Minitest::Spec and ::Given syntax options. Learn more about the Given/When/Then syntax on Wikipedia, or the work of Jim Weirich related to Rspec with Given.

The multi option places directories and files into a named directory, and is intended to flesh out a more complex spike that includes a tests directory and test_helper.rb, a lib directory, README.md, etc. The overall workflow is still the same:

$ spiker multi my_spike
$ cd my_spike

Bundle will run automatically and the user will be able to start development in a red-green fashion just the same as with the simple spike. There is also a Rakefile provided, the Guardfile is modified from the simple version to include files in directories, and simple tests are predefined.

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake test to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and the created tag, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/norlinga/spiker.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.