DRY-ing up some rspec

Question

I have an rspec spec test that has two sets of the same tests (from 24 Pull Requests). I thought I'd refactor the spec whilst I fixed something else.

Normally I just do a basic each ... do array to DRY things up:

require 'spec_helper'
describe ReminderMailer, type: :mailer do
 # Half the code yay! :D
 ['daily','weekly'].each do |time_format|
 describe time_format do
 let(:time_format) { time_format }
 let(:user) do
 mock_model(User, nickname: 'David',
 email: '[email protected]',
 languages: ['Ruby'],
 skills: [],
 pull_requests: double(:pull_request, year: []),
 suggested_projects: [])
 end
 # How do I do this bit better? 
 let(:mail) {
 if time_format == 'daily'
 ReminderMailer.daily(user)
 else
 ReminderMailer.weekly(user)
 end
 }
end

I couldn't figure out how to use the time_format with the send command, so I could do something like:

let(:mail) { ReminderMailer.send(timeformat(user) }

How could I do this?

• ferada: You could call the method by name since time_format is the same as both of the method names; stackoverflow.com/questions/13810429/call-a-method-by-name.

Answer 1

The snippet you asked to re-write:

let(:mail) { ReminderMailer.send(time_format, user) }

Now, IMO using each to write specs is a bad practice. Why? Because rspec already provides idiomatic infrastructure to keep specs DRYed: use before and shared_examples. I'd write:

describe ReminderMailer, type: :mailer do
 let(:user) { ... }
 shared_examples "a reminder mailer" do |subject:, body:|
 it 'renders the subject' do
 expect(mail.subject).to eq(subject)
 end
 it 'renders the receiver email' do
 expect(mail.to).to eq([user.email])
 end
 it 'renders the sender email' do
 expect(mail['From'].to_s).to eq('24 Pull Requests <[email protected]>')
 end
 it 'uses nickname' do
 expect(mail.body.encoded).to match(user.nickname)
 end
 it 'contains periodicity in body' do
 expect(mail.body.encoded).to match(body)
 end
 end
 describe 'daily' do
 let(:mail) { ReminderMailer.daily(user) }
 it_behaves_like "a reminder mailer", 
 subject: '[24 Pull Requests] Daily Reminder',
 body: 'today'
 end
 describe 'weekly' do
 let(:mail) { ReminderMailer.weekly(user) }
 it_behaves_like "a reminder mailer", 
 subject: '[24 Pull Requests] Weekly Reminder',
 body: 'week'
 end
end

• Peter Souter: Fantastic, even better than what I asked about :)