Ruby - FlexMock Backticks Method

Question

I have Ruby code that uses the backticks in a number of spots and want to test it out. I'm using FlexMock and want to mock that method somehow. I know the method is Kernel, :` but can't seem to get it to work with FlexMock. How would you do this? Here's a sample of a method I want to test:

def foo
  result = `ls`
  if result.to_a.length > 0
    true
  else
    false
  end
end

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 29 '09 at 04:57

So it turns out the backticks method specifically maps to Kernel.`, which is fine until one looks at the FlexMock source to see what they consider to be valid method names. The regex they use essentially is checking for alphanumeric with ? or ! at the end, so backtick fails to match this regex.

Changing the code internally resolves the initial exception that is thrown, but doesn't actually make the code work as intended. I could have monkeypatched it as pierr suggested, but that would be extremely repetitive in my testing code, so I went the alternate route and just made a shell method in my library code that only does the backticks. This method then can be mocked out in the desired fashion, and since I only use the backticks in a small number of places, not a lot of my underlying code had to be changed.

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:32

1

I know nothing about flexmock, but you might want to look at this.

edited May 23 '17 at 10:32

Community

1
1

answered Oct 28 '09 at 10:42

pierrotlefou

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Hmm, I could use something similar to this, but it makes a lot of work that flexmock is designed to get around. Part of the problem is that the ` method is just named differently than standard methods so flexmock's internal regex doesn't think it's a real method, but +1 for the good idea though. Thanks! – Chris Bunch Oct 29 '09 at 02:25

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 12 '09 at 17:22

0

You should call

Kernel.` "cmd"

instead of using

  `cmd`

on your code. Then you can test like this:

it "should call system ls" do
  Kernel.should_receive(:`).with("ls")
  Kernel.` "ls"
end

this example uses pure rspec

answered Nov 12 '09 at 17:22

Daniel Cukier

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Yes, as my answer says though, flexmock doesn't allow for backticks to be in mocked method names, so while it may work for rspec, it doesn't work for flexmock. Thanks though! – Chris Bunch Nov 15 '09 at 03:08

Ruby - FlexMock Backticks Method

3 Answers3