ridaalbarazi.welcome

Here is a quick scenario.. You have over 200 tests and 800 assertions for your Rails application and you always run them before every subversion commit, but because you love tests so much or maybe you’re doing some TDD you want these tests to be running all the time.

You need ZenTest and its beautiful autotest, which will not only keep your test running but it will do it in a very clever way. autotest keeps an eye on all your code changes, once you change a file it will run its according tests only, instead of running the whole bundle.

sudo gem install ZenTest

So now we have a wonderful tool, let’s pimp it with some colors, how about red for fails and green for passes? Thanks to Pat Eyler and his cute Red and Green for Ruby gem that does the this for us:

sudo gem install --remote Redgreen

Now let’s make this pimped ride growl. If you are on Mac then you probably know about Growl so why don’t we use growlnotify to notify us with autotest results? Download and install Growl in case you don’t have it and then install growlnotify:

“In your shell, cd to the directory on the Growl disk image containing growlnotify, and type ./install.sh. That script will install growlnotify to /usr/local/bin and the manpage to /usr/local/man.” from Growl documentation

Getting too much growl notification can get very nasty with every test running for every code change, the best solution for this is to popup a growl autotest notifier when and only when we have new test result, in other words, if any of my tests fails I should be notified, if they pass again I should also be notified, now as long as my tests are passing I don’t need to be notified anymore, right?

We’ll add a light file to our home directory named .autotest with all these configurations we talked about, in addition to all the above let’s have a colored Rails icon for each red/green test notification too.

# Save this as ".autotest" in root_folder of computer or project
 
# These require growlnotify, but once you have that you can tweak priorities
# in the Growl control panel to get RedGreen in the growl bubble itself!
# http://growl.info/documentation/growlnotify.php
 
#Taken straight from the example in Autotest gem
 
module AutoGrowl
  def self.growl title, msg, img='', pri=0, stick=""
    system "growlnotify -n autotest --image #{img} -p #{pri} -m #{msg.inspect} #{title} #{stick}"
  end
 
  Autotest.add_hook :run do  |at|
    growl "Run", "Run" unless $TESTING
  end
 
  Autotest.add_hook :red do |at|
    growl "Tests Failed", "#{at.files_to_test.size} tests failed", '~/rails_fail.png', 2
  end
 
  Autotest.add_hook :green do |at|
    growl "Tests Passed", "All tests passed", '~/rails_ok.png', -2 if at.tainted
  end
 
  Autotest.add_hook :init do |at|
    growl "autotest", "autotest was started" unless $TESTING
  end
 
  Autotest.add_hook :interrupt do |at|
    growl "autotest", "autotest was reset" unless $TESTING
  end
 
  Autotest.add_hook :quit do |at|
    growl "autotest", "autotest is exiting" unless $TESTING
  end
 
  Autotest.add_hook :all do |at|_hook
    growl "autotest", "Tests have fully passed", '~/rails_ok.png', -1 unless $TESTING
  end
end
 
class Autotest
 
# All code borrowed from:
# http://www.robsanheim.com/2006/08/07/hacking-green-bar-color-output-into-autotest/
 
  BAR = "=" * 80
 
  # filter output for colorized green/red bar
  def filter_output(results)
    filtered = ""
    results.each do |line|
 
      if line =~ /\\d+ tests, \\d+ assertions, 0 failures, 0 errors/
        line = "\\e[32m#{BAR}\\n#{$&}\\e[0m\\n\\n"
      elsif line =~ /\\d+ tests, \\d+ assertions, (\\d+) failures, (\\d+) errors/
        if $1 != 0 || $2 != 0
          line =  "\\e[31m#{BAR}\\n#{$&}\\e[0m\\n\\n"
        end
      end
      filtered <<line
    end
    filtered
  end
 
	def run_tests
	  find_files_to_test # failed + changed/affected
	  cmd = make_test_cmd @files_to_test
 
	  puts cmd
 
	  @results = `#{cmd}`
	  hook :ran_command
	  puts filter_output(@results)
 
	  handle_results(@results)
	end
end

Just place the following Rails icons in your home directory along with the .autotest file, run autotest -rails and enjoy being notified, Happy Hacking.

Update: In case you don’t really care about having the rails icons you can make your .autotest file way simpler (Thanks to Ryan’s comment) by requiring autotest/redgreen and autotest/growl and you are all set.

require 'autotest/redgreen'
require 'autotest/growl'

Additional Resources:

Here are a couple of other resources from where I collected the solution I have here:

• Sample .autotest file on Pastie
• Green goodness with autotest + growl by Internaut Design
• “Colored Tests” by errtheblog
• Growl + Autotest Rails with Zentest 3.4.0 by LabRatz