APR: Prototype Update

Just a quick update on the prototype for our agile project. We’ve dramatically improved test coverage, implemented authentication-restriction for some functionality, and refactored a litte of the code. Read on for the latest stats on coverage and testing.

Code and Test Metrics

While code-coverage metrics might be more useful, we don’t know how to calculate them yet. Here’s the same data we used in our previous update.

+----------------------+-------+-------+---------+---------+-----+-------+
| Name | Lines | LOC | Classes | Methods | M/C | LOC/M |
+----------------------+-------+-------+---------+---------+-----+-------+
| Controllers | 140 | 86 | 3 | 16 | 5 | 3 |
| Helpers | 7 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Models | 77 | 56 | 2 | 9 | 4 | 4 |
| Libraries | 233 | 145 | 3 | 30 | 10 | 2 |
| Components | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Model specs | 169 | 134 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| View specs | 86 | 62 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Controller specs | 74 | 54 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Helper specs | 86 | 62 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
+----------------------+-------+-------+---------+---------+-----+-------+
| Total | 872 | 605 | 8 | 55 | 6 | 9 |
+----------------------+-------+-------+---------+---------+-----+-------+
Code LOC: 293 Test LOC: 312 Code to Test Ratio: 1:1.1

Two interesting things to note:

• Our test-to-code ratio is now greater than 1. It should be even higher.
• We now have independent testing of the model, controllers, and views. What this means is that we can isolate specific behaviors and test them independently of other parts of the code.

More RSpec Tests

Here is the list of tests that we have written and that have been implemented.


Testing the controllers
When anonymous users interact with articles
- listing the articles should be successful
- showing an article should be successful
- editing an article should redirect to login
- creating a new article should redirect to login

When authenticated users interact with articles
- listing the articles should be successful
- showing an article should be successful
- editing an article should be successful
- creating an article should be successful

Testing the User Model

A user with articles
- must be able to find all her articles TBD
Multiple users
- must not have the same login ID
- must not have the same email address

A user, in general,
- must have a login ID
- must have an email address
- must have an email address with a valid format
- must have a password
- must have a long password

Testing the Article Model
An article
- must have a title
- must have a URL
- must not duplicate an existing article TBD
- must be associated with the user that created it TBD

Testing the Rendering (presentation) of Articles

/article/list
- should include the list of articles
- should include the individual article titles

Refactoring

One of the mantras of Rails developers is “DRY” – Don’t Repeat Yourself. And it applies to not writing the same code over and over again. With testing of the rendering (the user interface) of articles in place, I was able to refactor the implementation code to get improved re-use. The process went as follows:

1. Write code the first time.
2. Write tests, confirm their accuracy.
3. Rewrite the rendering code with re-use in mind (because we will list articles in many different ways – most recent, highest rated, etc).
4. Notice that the tests are failing.
5. Fix the new code until the tests pass.

Step 6 was a quick visual inspection / sanity-check that the UI was behaving as the tests assured – and it was.

Summary

At this stage, the prototype can

• Create/Edit users
• Create, Edit, Update, “Delete” articles
• Enforce the need to login to create an article

The next things to work on (where work = code + test) are

• Associate the article with the user who created it
• Create/Edit ratings (of articles, by users)
• Associate the rating with the user who created it
• Associate the rating with the article to which it applies
• Calculate the article “score” based on ratings
• Add a couple presentations (latest articles, highest scoring articles)
• Add a little styling/layout effort
• Deploy the prototype.

Still planning on getting a prototype version deployed before our second anniversary as a company (Cinco de Mayo). Most of today was spent learning how to test the different elements of the code with RSpec. Tomorrow will have more implementation accomplishments.
Anything missing?