FakeFS

Mocking calls to FileUtils or File means tightly coupling tests with the implementation.

it "creates a directory" do
  FileUtils.expects(:mkdir).with("directory").once
  Library.add "directory"
end

The above test will break if mkdir_p is used instead. Refactoring code should not necessitate refactoring tests.

A better approach is to use a temp directory if you are working with relative directories.

require 'tmpdir'

it "creates a directory" do
  Dir.mktmpdir do |dir|
    Dir.chdir dir do
      Library.add "directory"
      assert File.directory?("directory")
    end
  end
end

But if you are working with absolute directories or do not want to use temporary directories, use FakeFS instead:

it "creates a directory" do
  FakeFS do
    Library.add "directory"
    assert File.directory?("directory")
  end
end

Installation

gem install fakefs

Usage

To fake out the FS:

require 'fakefs'

Temporarily faking the FS

require 'fakefs/safe'

FakeFS.activate!
# your code
FakeFS.deactivate!

# or
FakeFS do
  # your code
end

Mocking IO methods

The IO class is the very basis for all Input and Output in Ruby, not only simple File reading/writting operations. To avoid breaking critical components, the fakefs gem is not mocking IO methods by default.

However you can enable some very simple mocks using an explicit optin keyword:


require 'fakefs/safe'

FakeFS.activate!(io_mocks: true)
# your code
FakeFS.deactivate!

Rails

In rails projects, add this to your Gemfile:

gem "fakefs", require: "fakefs/safe"

RSpec

Include FakeFS::SpecHelpers to turn FakeFS on and off in an example group:

require 'fakefs/spec_helpers'

describe "my spec" do
  include FakeFS::SpecHelpers
end

See lib/fakefs/spec_helpers.rb for more info.

To use FakeFS within a single test and be guaranteed a fresh fake filesystem:

require 'fakefs/safe'

describe "my spec" do
  context "my context" do
    it "does something to the filesystem"
      FakeFS.with_fresh do
        # whatever it does
      end
    end
  end
end

FakeFs --- `TypeError: superclass mismatch for class File`

pp and fakefs may collide, even if you're not actually explicitly using pp. Adding require 'pp' before require 'fakefs' should fix the problem locally. For a module-level fix, try adding it to the Gemfile:

source "https://rubygems.org"

require 'pp'
# list of gems

The problem may not be limited to pp; any gems that add to File may be affected.

Working with existing files

Clone existing directories or files to reuse them during tests, they are safe to modify.

FakeFS do
  config = File.expand_path('../../config', __FILE__)

  FakeFS::FileSystem.clone(config)
  expect(File.read("#{config}/foo.yml")).to include("original-content-of-foo")

  File.write("#{config}/foo.yml", "NEW")
  expect(File.read("#{config}/foo.yml")).to eq "NEW"
end

Integrating with other filesystem libraries

Third-party libraries may add methods to filesystem-related classes. FakeFS doesn't support these methods out of the box, but you can define fake versions yourself on the equivalent FakeFS classes. For example, FileMagic adds File#content_type. A fake version can be provided as follows:

FakeFS::File.class_eval do
  def content_type
    'fake/file'
  end
end

File.lock

Warning: experimental and might break if you obtain more that one flock per file using different descriptors

require 'fakefs/flockable_file'

Caveats

FakeFS internally uses the Pathname and FileUtils constants. If you use these in your app, be certain you're properly requiring them and not counting on FakeFS' own require.

As of v0.5.0, FakeFS's current working directory (i.e. Dir.pwd) is independent of the real working directory. Previously if the real working directory were, for example, /Users/donovan/Desktop, then FakeFS would use that as the fake working directory too, even though it most likely didn't exist. This caused all kinds of subtle bugs. Now the default working directory is the only thing that is guaranteed to exist, namely the root (i.e. /). This may be important when upgrading from v0.4.x to v0.5.x, especially if you depend on the real working directory while using FakeFS.

FakeFS replaces File and FileUtils, but is not a filesystem replacement, so gems that use strange commands or C might circumvent it. For example, the sqlite3 gem will completely ignore any faked filesystem.

Speed?

http://gist.github.com/156091

Contributing

Once you've made your great commits:

Fork FakeFS
Create a topic branch - git checkout -b my_branch
Push to your branch - git push origin my_branch
Open a Pull Request
That's it!

Releasing

bundle exec rake bump:patch or minor/major
bundle exec rake release