This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by Ryan Davis. Original Post: making functional test failures readable Feed Title: Polishing Ruby Feed URL: http://blog.zenspider.com/index.rdf Feed Description: Musings on Ruby and the Ruby Community... Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by Ryan Davis Latest Posts From Polishing Ruby

Tired of your rails functional test failures being completely unreadable? I'm not terribly fond of rails' assert_tag but it is better than nothing. However, I never like to read something like the following:

expected tag, but no tag found matching {:attributes=>{:action=>"/admin/themes/update/1"}, :tag=>"form"} in:
"<!DOCTYPE [...3k worth of crap cut...]</html>".

Ugh! It just does nothing to help you and since it isn't expressed as a diff, unit_diff is no help in this arena. I have however figured out how to make it much more manageable with the following snippets:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  def initialize(testing=false)
    super()
    self.class.layout(nil) if testing
  end
  [...]
end

and then in your functional tests:

def setup
  @controller = MyController.new(true)
  [...]
end

Now your failures contain just the content from the page:

expected tag, but no tag found matching {:attributes=>{:action=>"/admin/themes/update/1"}, :tag=>"form"} in:
"\n<ul>\n <li>Name: Blue</li>\n <li>Folder: blue</li>\n <li>Description: A Plain blue theme</li>\n <li>Masthead: Blue</li>\n <li>Editor: n/a</li>\n</ul>\n\n<a href=\"/admin/themes/show/1\">Cancel Editing</a>\n".