CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-rails
user1427661
user1427661

Reputation: 11794

External API Method Placement and Testing

I have a site that displays a section with stack overflow queries related to a post. To get these, it uses the SO API to search SO for posts similar to the title of the post on my site.

My question is, where should I put this method? It's directly related to posts in that it uses a post's title to make the API call. But it's also directly related to the controller in that it returns data that must be passed on to the view. I doubt I'd want to put code for even a simple API call inside of an actual view. Maybe I should put it in a library/helper method?

Also, once I've decided where to put the method, how should I test it without having to call the API every time? I'm trying to read up on stubs but I'm getting confused. It'd be nice to have an example in a context like this and build my knowledge from there.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 91

Answers (2)

mike
mike

Reputation: 859

You can use gem for stub http-requests. I used for it webmock which has integration with rspec, test/unit or minitest

Upvotes: 2

EfratBlaier
EfratBlaier

Reputation: 559

In my opinion, you should put it in a new model (without inheriting from ActiveRecord). Then make the controller call it to get the data and pass it on to the view. If you'd like to test this model - you can use "fakeweb" which is a gem that allows you to mock http requests with your own results.

https://github.com/chrisk/fakeweb

Upvotes: 1

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