I've been working through the tutorials at railstutorial.org, and I was a little stumped by the author's code for section -- 6.2.1 Validating presence.
In the user model, the tutorial adds validates :name, :presence => true. Simple enough.
When the author chooses to write the rspec test, he does something that I thought was a little strange.
describe User do
before(:each) do
@attr = { :name => "Example User", :email => "[email protected]" }
end
.
.
.
it "should require a name" do
no_name_user = User.new(@attr.merge(:name => ""))
no_name_user.should_not be_valid
end
end
Why go through the trouble to merge a blank string to @attr when one could get rid of the :each block statement and simply write:
it "should require a name" do
no_name_user = User.new(:name => "", :email => "[email protected]")
no_name_user.should_not be_valid
end
I know that the author uses the @attr variable to validate the presence of the email address as well, which is one indication as to why he used the block statement -- to me it makes more sense to follow the structure of the second block quote. Still, I have a feeling there is something that I'm missing here.
Another explanation that crossed my mind is that it helps to use the @attr structure when there are lots of keys to be entered, as opposed to this rather simplistic case of only name and email.
Anyone have any input?
It's so there's one standard attributes map that can be used across all the tests. When a test requires that a value isn't there, it's removed.
Personally, I wasn't convinced it was worth it as it sort of obfuscates things (as you discovered), but there it is.