How would you test observers with rSpec in a Ruby on Rails application?

You are on the right track, but I have run into a number of frustrating unexpected message errors when using rSpec, observers, and mock objects. When I am spec testing my model, I don't want to have to handle observer behavior in my message expectations.

In your example, there isn't a really good way to spec "set_status" on the model without knowledge of what the observer is going to do to it.

Therefore, I like to use the "No Peeping Toms" plugin. Given your code above and using the No Peeping Toms plugin, I would spec the model like this:

describe Person do   it "should set status correctly" do     @p = Person.new(:status => "foo")    @p.set_status("bar")    @p.save    @p.status.should eql("bar")  endend

You can spec your model code without having to worry that there is an observer out there that is going to come in and clobber your value. You'd spec that separately in the person_observer_spec like this:

describe PersonObserver do  it "should clobber the status field" do     @p = mock_model(Person, :status => "foo")    @obs = PersonObserver.instance    @p.should_receive(:set_status).with("aha!")    @obs.after_save  endend 

If you REALLY REALLY want to test the coupled Model and Observer class, you can do it like this:

describe Person do   it "should register a status change with the person observer turned on" do    Person.with_observers(:person_observer) do      lambda { @p = Person.new; @p.save }.should change(@p, :status).to("aha!)    end  endend

99% of the time, I'd rather spec test with the observers turned off. It's just easier that way.

Disclaimer: I've never actually done this on a production site, but it looks like a reasonable way would be to use mock objects, should_receive and friends, and invoke methods on the observer directly

Given the following model and observer:

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base  def set_status( new_status )    # do whatever  endendclass PersonObserver < ActiveRecord::Observer  def after_save(person)    person.set_status("aha!")  endend

I would write a spec like this (I ran it, and it passes)

describe PersonObserver do  before :each do    @person = stub_model(Person)    @observer = PersonObserver.instance  end  it "should invoke after_save on the observed object" do    @person.should_receive(:set_status).with("aha!")    @observer.after_save(@person)  endend

no_peeping_toms is now a gem and can be found here: https://github.com/patmaddox/no-peeping-toms