如何使用RSpec在我的Rails应用程序中测试JQuery-UI Sortable的控制器交互？

Question

The problem

The problem is that I know the controller sort action is being called, and that it's getting the right params to do its thing. I can see everything is working when I test through the UI, but it won't sort for my tests . I can see (using "puts" in the controller action) that the hash is being sent to the controller action correctly, so that's working well. The issue is that it seems like the controller action simply isn't... ACTING.

The question

How do I test this? I've tried inserting a "sleep 2" after the :post, :sort line in my spec. You can see I've added the "xhr" in front of that line, and I've tried adding :format => :js at the end of that line (not shown) to no avail.

What I'm doing

I'm using JQuery UI's "sortable" plugin to sort jobs on a checklist on-screen. It currently works well, and I can "test" this by just changing the order on screen, and then refreshing the page to see that everything is now in the correct spot (the spot I just moved things to before refreshing). Obviously, this isn't rigorous testing, but it's been good enough until now.

Now, I'm adding some logic to copy/archive the sorted items in the background, and I need to do some testing to make sure all the data is being manipulated properly when I do a sort. The old sort-refresh-check testing method won't work here because some stuff happens in the background, and that stuff doesn't show up on screen. Before I write those tests, I wanted to write tests for the currently-working setup, but I can't get the tests to pass.

Notes on associations

There are Jobs, Checklists, and ChecklistsJobs (the join table). The join table has the "job_position" field that's being updated using this sort. See below in the "code" section for snippets of the models.

Resources used to do this

JQuery UI - Sortable

Railscast #147 Sortable Lists (revised)

Guard gem

Rails 3.2.11

ruby 1.9.3p374

rspec 2.13.1

Gems in :test

gem "rspec-rails", :group => [:test, :development]
group :test do
  gem "factory_girl_rails", :require => false
  gem "capybara"
  gem "guard-rspec"
  gem 'rb-fsevent', '~> 0.9'
end

Code

job.rb

class Job < ActiveRecord::Base
  scope :archived_state, lambda {|s| where(:archived => s)}

  belongs_to :creator, :class_name => "Admin", :foreign_key => "creator_id"
  has_many :checklists_jobs, :dependent => :destroy
  has_many :checklists, :through => :checklists_jobs
.
.
.
end

checklist.rb

class Checklist < ActiveRecord::Base
  scope :archived_state, lambda {|s| where(:archived => s) }

  has_many :checklists_jobs, :dependent => :destroy, :order => 'checklists_jobs.job_position'#, :conditions => {'archived_at' => nil}
  has_many :jobs, :through => :checklists_jobs
.
.
.
end

checklists_job.rb

class ChecklistsJob < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :job
  belongs_to :checklist
  attr_accessible :job_position, :job_required
.
.
.
end

application.js

$(function() {
    $('ul[id^="sortable"]').sortable({
        axis: 'y',
        handle: '.handle',
        update: function() {
            return $.post($(this).data('update-url'), $(this).sortable('serialize'));
          }
    });
});

Show.html.erb view

<dd><ul class="unstyled" id="sortable" data-update-url="<%= sort_checklist_path(@checklist) %>">
  <% @checklist.checklists_jobs.archived_state(:false).each do |cj| %>
    <%= content_tag_for :li, cj do %><span class="handle"><i class="icon-move btn btn-mini"></i></span> <strong><%= cj.job.name %></strong><% if cj.job.description? %> - <%= cj.job.description %><% end %>
    <% end %>
  <% end %>
</ul></dd>

checklists_controller.rb

def sort
  @checklist = Checklist.find(params[:id])
  params[:checklists_job].each_with_index do |id, index|
    @checklist.checklists_jobs.update_all({job_position: index+1}, {id: id})
  end
  render nothing: true
end

checklists_controller_spec.rb - I know this isn't super efficient user of space, but I broke everything out into individual lines to make sure I was setting everything up correctly.

require 'spec_helper'

describe ChecklistsController do
  login_admin  
  describe "POST sort" do
    context "with no submission" do
      before do
        @checklist = FactoryGirl.create(:checklist)
        @job1 = FactoryGirl.create(:job)
        @job2 = FactoryGirl.create(:job)
        @job3 = FactoryGirl.create(:job)
        @job4 = FactoryGirl.create(:job)
        @checklist.jobs << [@job1, @job2, @job3, @job4]
        @checklist.save
        @cj1 = @checklist.checklists_jobs.find_by_job_id(@job1.id)
        @cj2 = @checklist.checklists_jobs.find_by_job_id(@job2.id)
        @cj3 = @checklist.checklists_jobs.find_by_job_id(@job3.id)
        @cj4 = @checklist.checklists_jobs.find_by_job_id(@job4.id)
        @cj1.job_position = 1
        @cj2.job_position = 2
        @cj3.job_position = 3
        @cj4.job_position = 4
        @cj1.save
        @cj2.save
        @cj3.save
        @cj4.save
        @attr = [@job4.id, @job3.id, @job2.id, @job1.id]        
      end

      # format of the params hash that's being passed:
      # {"checklists_job"=>["545", "544", "546", "547"], "id"=>"124"}

      it "sorts the checklist's checklists_jobs" do
        xhr :post, :sort, { :id => @checklist.id, :checklists_job => @attr }
        @checklist.reload
        # The test fails on the next line
        @checklist.checklists_jobs.find_by_job_id(@job1.id).job_position.should == 4
      end
    end
  end
end

Test results - Note that I've marked the failing line in the spec above

Failures:

  1) ChecklistsController POST sort with no submission sorts the checklist's checklists_jobs
     Failure/Error: @checklist.checklists_jobs.find_by_job_id(@job1.id).job_position.should == 4
       expected: 4
            got: 1 (using ==)
     # ./spec/controllers/checklists_controller_spec.rb:394:in `block (4 levels) in <top (required)>'

Finished in 2.59 seconds
51 examples, 1 failure

Failed examples:

rspec ./spec/controllers/checklists_controller_spec.rb:391 # ChecklistsController POST sort with no submission sorts the checklist's checklists_jobs

Answer 1

This is a pretty simple answer: The @attr array I was building in my before block was an array of job ids, and should've been an array of checklists_job ids.

This:

@attr = [@job4.id, @job3.id, @job2.id, @job1.id] 

Should've been this:

@attr = [@cj4.id, @cj3.id, @cj2.id, @cj1.id]

Oops.