A small post about how I had been using rspec for rubymotion incorrectly and how it works properly.

rubymotion-specs.md

Rubymotion notes

Testing

This line should be added to the app delegate didLaunchWithOptions method

class AppDelegate
  def application(application, didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:launchOptions)
    return true if RUBYMOTION_ENV == 'test'
    # ...

This pretty much returns if the app is in testing mode. This is important because when running tests a window should not be created. Specs automatically create a window and controller (shown below) so having the app delegate also create a window will cause some bugs. You should still add in any initialization code thats required for setup before that line.

When testing a view controller it is important to specify what class is being tested. Lets say I have a controller called FooController, the corresponding spec file would look like so:

describe “The 'FooController'” do
	tests FooController
	
	#Your specs go here.
end

The tests FooController line tells Bacon what class is actually being tested. This will instantiate a new window and new instance of the specified class. These are then available in the specs as controller and window. So that means I could do something like this:

describe ProjectsScreen do
  tests ProjectsScreen

  it "is the right class" do
    controller.should.be.kind_of ProjectsScreen
  end

  it "does contain a table view" do
    controller.tableView.should.not == nil
  end

  it "does display projects" do
    controller.tableView.visibleCells.should.not.be.empty
  end

  describe "Selecting a project" do
    before do
      @project = controller.projects[0]
      tap "#{@project.name}"
    end

    it "opens the projec_screen when a selection is made" do
      controller.project_screen.parent_screen.should == controller
    end

    it "passes though the selected project" do
      controller.project_screen.current_project.should == @project
    end
  end
end

One can override the controller by doing something like

describe ProjectsScreen do
  tests ProjectsScreen

  def controller
    @controller ||= ProjectsScreen.new(nav_bar: true)
  end

  #specs
end

However, the problem here is if any of your specs push stuff onto the screen then you will get a warning saying that the view is not in the window hierarchy. This makes total sense… In the obove example the controller now returns a new ProjectScreen which is totally on its own, isolated from the app.. It hasn’t been added onto any view that is some how linked to the window.

Before I knew how the previously mentioned stuff worked I had tried crerating a new window and setting it as the key window where the object I was testing is the rootViewController.

describe ProjectsScreen do
  tests ProjectsScreen

  def controller
    projectsScreen = ProjectsScreen.new(nav_bar: true)
    
    window = UIWindow.alloc.initWithFrame(UIScreen.mainScreen.bounds)
    window.rootViewController = projectsScreen
    window.makeKeyAndVisible

    @controller ||= projectsScreen
  end

  #specs
end

However this doesn’t change a thing and messes up other things. So to stay safe. Just do it the way I mentioned above.