= RedRock

== WARNING

This was a bit of an experiment that I never really needed to use, so hasn't been maintained.

You might find Moxy[http://jondot.github.com/moxy/] a bit more useful.

== What is this?

A wrapper for running WebMock[http://github.com/bblimke/webmock] remotely (ie mocking requests made by an application that's not running in the same process as your tests).

== When might I want to use it?

If you're testing an application that makes remote web requests, and for some reason you can't run the application code directly inside your test framework. This might be because you're running integration tests against a stack of applications, you're using something like Culerity[http://github.com/langalex/culerity] or Selenium[http://seleniumhq.org/], or maybe the application doesn't use one of the HTTP libraries that WebMock supports, or isn't even written in Ruby.

== Getting started

gem install redrock

Somewhere in your tests:

require "redrock" include RedRock

You can then make most of the same calls you would normally make to WebMock, and they will be transparently handled by RedRock. For example:

stub_request :any, "localhost:4242/chunky/bacon" ... RedRock.should have_requested :get, "http://localhost:4242/chunky/bacon"

The RedRock server starts automatically when required, but you can start it manually if you want to run it on a different port:

RedRock.start 1234

You can also stop it manually:

RedRock.stop

If you want to use a host other than localhost, you can map it in <tt>/etc/hosts</tt>. If you can't override the port your application talks to, you'll have to set up a reverse proxy as well.

== Compatibility

RedRock has been tested with the following versions of WebMock:

1.3.0
1.3.1
1.3.2
1.3.3
1.3.4
1.3.5

It probably works with later versions too, but I need to rework RedRock's tests to be certain. Watch this space.

== How does it work?

RedRock fires up a thin[http://code.macournoyer.com/thin/] server (by default on port 4242), which attempts to proxy all incoming requests using Net::HTTP, at which point they are intercepted by WebMock. You point your application under test at this server, instead of the real service it's supposed to interact with.

All calls to WebMock methods in your tests are proxied through to the RedRock server, which means that stubs and expectations are effectively being applied to the requests being made by the application under test.

=== Unsupported WebMock features

Allowing real requests doesn't really make any sense for RedRock, so if you call <tt>allow_net_connect!</tt> or <tt>disable_net_connect!</tt> you'll get an error.

Raising exceptions or timing out won't work as expected, because the exceptions will be handled in the RedRock server, not the application under test.

== Development

After cloning the project:

gem install bundler # if not already installed rake gemspec # bootstrap gemspec for bundler bundle bundle exec rake

== TODO

Better documentation!
Refactor the server, which is currently a small ball of mud.
Support latest version of WebMock

== Why "RedRock"?

I started with "Remote WebMock". "RWebMock" doesn't exactly trip off the tongue, so I thought maybe "RebMock". That sounded like Scooby-Doo saying "WebMock", although he'd probably say "RebRock". That sounded almost like "RedRock", which is where I stopped. I'm a bit surprised that there isn't already a redrock gem, given that a ruby is basically a red rock, but hey, you've had seven years or so.

== Other random stuff

Version 0.1.0 was released on Whyday, 19 August 2010.

RedRock is intended to replace FakeTTP[http://github.com/kerryb/fakettp], which no-one apart from me and a few colleagues ever used.

Redrock

Install / Use

README