In Ruby's Test::Unit::Testcase, How to Override the Initialize Method

Global setup and teardown blocks in Test::Unit

You could just patch Test::Unit::TestCase and define a setup method:

class Test::Unit::TestCase
  def setup
    puts 'in setup'
  end
end

And your subclasses would just use this by default:

class FooTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  def test_truth
    assert true
  end
end

class BarTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  def test_truth
    assert true
  end
end

If a test case needed to have its own setup, you would need to call super first to ensure that the global setup runs:

class BazTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  def setup
    super
    puts 'custom setup'
  end

  def test_truth
    assert true
  end
end

Is having a global setup really something you need to do, or would it be helpful to have a helper method defined on Test::Unit::TestCase and call that in the tests that need it? The helper method approach is something that I find beneficial on my projects – the setup state and intention is clearer in each individual test and I don't need to jump around to find some "hidden" setup method. Quite often, a global setup is a code smell indicating that you need to rethink part of your design, but YMMV.

Update

Since you're using ActiveSupport, here's a first stab at something that won't require a call to super each time you define a setup method in your test case. I don't know how valuable it is, since it requires a call to a different method and any developer can just define their own setup method in the test case that will invalidate this change. Here it is:

require 'rubygems'
require 'test/unit'
require 'active_support'
require 'active_support/test_case'

class ActiveSupport::TestCase

  def setup_with_global
    puts 'In Global setup'
    setup_without_global
  end

  alias_method_chain :setup, :global

end

class FooTest < ActiveSupport::TestCase

  def setup_without_global
    puts 'In Local setup'
  end

  def test_truth
    assert true
  end

end

Test modules with Test::Unit

Yeah, your initialize should definitely suggest that you're going towards a class. A module in ruby often feels like an interface in other languages, as long as you implement some basic things when you include the module you'll get a lot for free.

Enumerable is a great example, as long as you define [] and each when you include Enumerable you suddenly get pop, push, etc.

So my gut feeling about testing modules is that you should probably be testing classes that include the module rather than testing the module itself unless the module is designed to not be included in anything, it's simply a code storage mechanism.

How to get the current testcase name in test-unit?

In Ruby 1.9.3, you can do something like this:

def setup
  puts self.__name__
end

With Test::Unit, how can I run a bit of code before all tests (but not each test)?

Why do you need it inside the test? You could define it gloabl:

gem 'test-unit'#, '>= 2.1.1' #startup
require 'test/unit'

GLOBAL_DATA = 11

class My_Tests < Test::Unit::TestCase

  def test_1()
    puts "Testing startup 1"
    assert_equal(11, GLOBAL_DATA)
  end
end

GLOBAL_DATA could be a (singleton)-class (respective an instance).

If you have only one testclass, you may use TestCase.startup:

gem 'test-unit'#, '>= 2.1.1' #startup
require 'test/unit'


class My_Tests < Test::Unit::TestCase
  def self.startup
    puts "Define global_data "
    @@global_data = 11
  end

  def test_1()
    puts "Testing 1"
    assert_equal(11,     @@global_data = 11)
  end
  def test_2()
    puts "Testing 2"
    assert_equal(11,     @@global_data = 11)
  end
end

call another testcase from within a testcase in Test::Unit

Looks like I can just use regular methods. The problem for some reason had to do with the Headless gem. I reverted to using Xvfb directly.

With Test::Unit, how can I run a bit of code before all tests (but not each test)?

Why do you need it inside the test? You could define it gloabl:

gem 'test-unit'#, '>= 2.1.1' #startup
require 'test/unit'

GLOBAL_DATA = 11

class My_Tests < Test::Unit::TestCase

  def test_1()
    puts "Testing startup 1"
    assert_equal(11, GLOBAL_DATA)
  end
end

GLOBAL_DATA could be a (singleton)-class (respective an instance).

If you have only one testclass, you may use TestCase.startup:

gem 'test-unit'#, '>= 2.1.1' #startup
require 'test/unit'


class My_Tests < Test::Unit::TestCase
  def self.startup
    puts "Define global_data "
    @@global_data = 11
  end

  def test_1()
    puts "Testing 1"
    assert_equal(11,     @@global_data = 11)
  end
  def test_2()
    puts "Testing 2"
    assert_equal(11,     @@global_data = 11)
  end
end

How to define common setup and teardown logic for all tests in ruby's Test::Unit::TestCase?

Thanks to Andrew I found an answer to this here on stackoverflow.

However in the course of trying to find an answer I also noticed that in the 1.9.x branch the standard testing framework was switched to MiniTest. So actually I'm using that for testing right now. This answer explains how to achieve the same with MiniTest.

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