FlexMock 0.6.4 Release

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FlexMock 0.6.4 Release 17 Aug 07

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New Release of FlexMock

Just wanted to drop a quick note that a new version of FlexMock is now available.

There are two nice enhancements and a minor bug fix in this version.

The first enhancement is for mocking ActiveRecord objects. The folks at EdgeCase use a mockmodel() method for the RSpec mock that returns a mock that has some common ActiveRecord methods mocked (stubbed) with some reasonable values. This make is a bit more convenient when mocking Rails models. FlexMock now supports this natively, just say flexmock(:model, YourRailsModel) to create a mock object that mimics a YourRailsModel object.

The second enhancement is in regard to the What Should flexmock(real_obj) Return? question I blogged about last May. I asked the question: What should flexmock(real_obj) return, the real object or the mock object? Someone had suggested returning the real object when flexmock() is given a block. There was some positive response to that, so that was included in the FlexMock release.

But after several months of using it, I found it difficult to remember which version of flexmock() returned what. At one point I found myself caling flexmock() with an empty block, just to get the real object back. That was madness.

So starting with release 0.6.4, flexmock will always return the real object. This is the best of both worlds, but it comes with a small price. Real objects partially mocked by FlexMode will now be enhanced with some extra methods, just enough methods so that addition mock behavior can be added to it. For example, should_receive is added to the partially mocked real object. This pollutes the method namespace for an object, but the result is much simplier for the programmer to use. If you really want to avoid method namespace pollution, there is a :safe mode offered. Read the docs for all the gory details.

By The Way, If You Grabbed Version 0.6.3 …

If you are one of the handful of people that downloaded verion 0.6.3 yesterday, then go ahead and grab 0.6.4. The only difference is in the API for mocking ActiveRecord models. After using it for a bit, I realized that the API could be improved, hence version 0.6.4. Sorry about that.