How to load Rails view for testing in Jasmine?

Question

The following code works in a browser, but how to test it with Jasmine? Upon clicking #opener, it should display a jQuery dialog box and make an ajax call to load the content:

$ ->
  $( "#dialog" ).dialog({ autoOpen: false });
  $( "#opener" ).click ->
    $( "#dialog" ).dialog( "open" );
    $( "#dialog" ).load('/content');

spec.js.coffee:

describe "Open Dialog Box", ->
  it "gets content from server", ->
    spyOn($, "ajax")
    $('#opener').click()
    expect($.ajax.mostRecentCall.args[0]["url"]).toEqual("/content")

view:

<div>
  <a id="opener" href="#">See Content</a>
</div>

<div id="dialog" title="Content"></div>

It is not getting the click event, so it seems that the view is not being loaded. How to load the view for testing?

Working in Rails 3.2.2 and Jasminerice.

Answer 1

Jasminerice allows any template put inside spec/javascript/fixtures to be treated as a fixture. You just need to execute loadFixture 'fixtureName'. Fixture documentation for Jasminerice explains a bit more.

I would not go with rendering the same views as in app/views. If you're doing it right, you're be only depending on minor structure (classes, etc) that you can easily replicate in a fixture. If you then need to check that your actual views comply with these assumptions, you can write a request spec (sadly, rspec views spec default matchers cannot check document structure, though you can always rely on some nokogiri-fu for that.

If you have some partials, you can rely on Jasminerice::HelperMethods to provide some methods/variables.

Answer 2

jasmine is for js unit testing, if you need to test something small with dom i.e. if plugin works properly it's ok to use fixtures, for rails app i'd recommend go with capybara imo.