docbrown/docs/tests/test-flags.md

title
Test Flags

Test Flags

When creating tests using Rspec we have the ability to add flags to those tests that will signal to Rspec to run certain commands before, after, or around the test example.

Some flags that we use are:

• js: true
• elasticsearch_reset: true
• elasticsearch: <search class name>
• stub_elasticsearch: true
• throttle: true
• type: <test type>

Elasticsearch Flags

Two Elasticsearch flags that can be used when dealing with specs that will be hitting Elasticsearch. When running a spec that is going to interact with Elasticsearch, you want Elasticsearch to be clean like your database. Since we don't have a "database cleaner" for Elasticsearch, we have to do it manually. There are two ways to do this:

1. elasticsearch: reset - This will trigger a complete tear down and rebuild of Elasticsearch via a block. This takes time so it's not something you want to be doing unless you absolutely have to.

  config.around(:each, elasticsearch_reset: true) do |example|
    Search::Cluster.recreate_indexes
    example.run
    Search::Cluster.recreate_indexes
  end

2. elasticsearch: <search class name> - This will clear the data for the given search class index. For example, if you passed "User" as your search class name it would clear out the user index data using code from this block.

  config.around(:each, :elasticsearch) do |ex|
    klasses = Array.wrap(ex.metadata[:elasticsearch]).map do |search_class|
      Search.const_get(search_class)
    end
    klasses.each { |klass| clear_elasticsearch_data(klass) }
    ex.run
  end

js: true Flag

js: true indicates that we want the javascript on the page to be executed when the page is rendered, and a headless chrome instance will be initialized to do so (instead of the default rack_test driver). One side effect of running our javascript in our specs is that a lot of pages will hit Elasticsearch. Since we don't clean out Elasticsearch between every single spec (because it is very costly) this can lead to unexpected data being loaded for a spec. To prevent this from happening, we can use the :stub_elasticsearch flag. The :stub_elasticsearch flag will stub all index and search requests made to Elasticsearch and return an empty response. This will ensure that no unwanted data shows up on your spec's page.

If you are debugging a js: true spec and want to see the browser, you can set HEADLESS=false before running a spec:

HEADLESS=false bundle exec rspec spec/app/system