IronRuby doesn’t currently work with the latest versions of cucumber. This is a known bug and is a real pain. There is a work around, and it’s kinda rubbish: don’t use any versions of cucumber > 0.6.3. After that version, Gherkin became a .c extension – and IronRuby doesn’t like .c extensions.
Keith Burnell (the .Net Dev Dude) has blogged about getting Cucumber working with IronRuby – you may want to take a look if you’re getting stuck.
So, no matter how much you argue that it’s an ancient, irrelevant browser; there’s no way you can wriggle out of having to test your web app against IE6 on WinXP. But… trying to find a machine with it lying around might be difficult. Magnanimous Microsoft have made testing your web app on different IE/Windows combinations less tedious than it could be: combine Virtual PC with a collection of pre-built images and you’re on your way. Here are the details…
First, you’ll need to install Virtual PC:
Next, you’ll need to download as many of the following combinations of Windows/IE as you want from here.
The Windows/IE combinations available are:
Download the images you need, start them, get your testing done before the VM runs out of time (they’re time limited) and then get back to doing something less painful!
Enjoy your multi-IE-version testing. Rather you than me 
It’s not always that you can test a website from the comfort of Firefox + Firebug + FireCookie. When you have to use another browser where checking cookies isn’t so much fun (er… that’s all of them but firefox), you can at least get a dump of them to an alert box by putting the following into the address bar once the page has loaded:
javascript:alert(document.cookie.split(';').join('\n'))
Bookmark it to make life easier!
If you want to clear IE cookies on the command line, here’s what you’re after:
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 2
More options available here:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows/clear-ie7-browsing-history-from-the-command-line/
After spending a few hours trying to connect to an oracle database in ironruby using various gems, I gave up. None of the gems out there would work, each for a different reason. It was time to write my own class to do the job of managing connections and executing queries.
You’ll need a few things:
Data Source=(DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS_LIST=(ADDRESS=(PROT...Once you’ve got those details, you can use the following class:
require 'System'
require 'System.Data'
require File.join(File.expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__)), "Oracle.DataAccess.dll")
class IronRubyOracleClient
#pass in oracle connection string, eg, for Test env:
def initialize(connection_string)
@connection = Oracle::DataAccess::Client::OracleConnection.new(connection_string)
end
#opens connection
def open
@connection.open
end
#returns 2D array
def execute(query)
@query = query
cmd = Oracle::DataAccess::Client::OracleCommand.new(@query, @connection)
cmd.CommandType = System::Data::CommandType.Text
data_reader = cmd.ExecuteReader()
column_count = data_reader.visible_field_count.to_i
result_rows = ::System::Collections::ArrayList.new
while(data_reader.read) do
row = ::System::Collections::ArrayList.new
column_count.times do |i|
row.add(data_reader.get_oracle_value(i).to_string)
end
result_rows.add(row)
end
result_set = []
result_rows.each do |result_row|
ruby_row = []
result_row.each do |cell|
ruby_row << cell.to_s
end
result_set << ruby_row
end
result_set
end
#close connection
def close
@connection.close
end
end
And here’s how you use it:
#create your connection string
connection_string = "Data Source=(DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS_LIST=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=..." #etc...
#create an instance of the client, passing in the connection string
my_client = IronRubyOracleClient.new(connection_string)
#open a connection to the database
my_client.open
#execute a query and save the result
results = my_client.execute("select * from some_table")
#dump the results (a 2D array of values)
puts results.inspect
#close the connection
my_client.close
It’s fairly slow, but it works. Which is an improvement on what’s out there…
Note that everything is returned as a string. For some reason, the unless the data is a basic string or is a number that fits into an integer, the data gets garbled somewhere between the dll and ironruby. I can’t find out where, so everything-returned-as-a-string is the current compromise. If you can get it to work with all data types, send it along!
—UPDATE—
Since writing this post, I’ve put together a gem called ‘responsalizr‘ which is a way better solution than what follows in this post. Read about it here. And now back to the original post…
Testing redirects from a web app is simple enough – make a request and check the response code making sure it’s a 301, 302 or whatever you’re expecting. The test you end up writing isn’t nice idiomatic ruby though. So, I wrote a quick monkey patch… here it is:
class Net::HTTPResponse
#returns true if the response is a 200
def ok?
instance_of?(Net::HTTPOK)
end
#returns true if the response is a 301
def found?
instance_of?(Net::HTTPFound)
end
#returns true if the response is a 302
def moved_permanently?
instance_of?(Net::HTTPMovedPermanently)
end
#returns true for any kind of redirect (301..307)
def redirect?
kind_of?(Net::HTTPRedirection)
end
#returns the url being redirected to if this response is a redirect
def redirect_url
redirect? ? self['location'] : raise("Not a redirect response")
end
end
Basically, it adds the following predicate methods to the Net::HTTPResponse class: “ok?” (returns true if response code is 200), “found?” (returns true if response code is 301), “moved_permanently?” (returns true if response code is 302) and “redirect?” (returns true if the response is a redirect – from 301..307). Because these are predicate methods, they can be used by rspec – your test code suddenly becomes much cleaner! The moneky patch also adds the “redirect_url” method which returns the url to be redirected to if the response is a redirect of some sort. The advantage of this is that your tests become much more idiomatic:
#the urls we're testing with...
@url_initially_navigated_to = "http://mail.google.com"
@expected_redirect_url = "https://www.google.com/.../etc/..."
#make the request
@response= Net::HTTP.get_response(URI.parse(@url_initially_navigated_to))
#nice idiomatic tests! - use the one you're expecting...
@response.should be_ok #expecting a 200
@response.should be_found #expecting a 301
@response.should be_moved_permanently #expecting a 302
@response.should be_a_redirect #expecting anything between 301..307
#testing the url being redirected to
@response.redirect_url.should match(@expected_redirect_url)
There you go! Nice idiomatic redirect tests! Enjoy.
TURN (“Test::Unit Reporter (New)”) aims to fix test::unit‘s default output. Instead of waiting until the end of a test run for failure details, Turn displays failures immediately. It looks promising…
My new NetGear NV+ has just arrived. It’s great. Apart from the fact that none of the paperwork mentions the username or password you need to log in to the admin console. If you’re looking for the same info, the details you need are:
Hope that helps!