---
title: 'Unpopular Developer 5: Stop Unit Testing Your Scaffold Controllers'
teaser:
tags: web,testing,good code
author: Mike Burns
published_on: 2009-08-12
---

This goes out to all the veteran Ruby on Rails developers: those who have the
RESTful scaffold memorized down to their fingertips; those who can write the
tests for it using [Cucumber](http://cukes.info) with
[Webrat](http://webrat.rubyforge.org), Rails integration tests with Webrat,
Rails controller tests with [RSpec](http://rspec.info), Test::Unit, or
[Shoulda](http://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda), using mocking, stubbing, [test
spies](https://thoughtbot.com/blog/post/159805295/spy-vs-spy), or old-school
assertion style:

## Stop unit testing the RESTful scaffold

Do write an integration test with Webrat (and Cucumber or Rails integration
tests or some crazy script using [Hubris](http://github.com/mwotton/Hubris)),
but abstract that out as much as you can. It's the scaffold. You know it works.

You *should* write a unit test for your RESTful controller as soon as it
deviates, and you should test-drive that deviation both in the integration test
and the unit test.

Here, some code. First the `#index` action, non-tested:

```ruby
def index
  @posts = Post.all
end
```

It works. No unit test will uncover a bug in this. The integration test may -
for example, `Post` may have no database table yet, or it may not derive from
`ActiveRecord::Base`, or may redefine `Post.all`, or anything else - but the
unit test for the controller will fail due to a regression.

So now we'll make a change: posts should be listed alphabetically.

```cucumber
Feature: Posts
  # ... existing scenarios that test everything go here ...
  Scenario: Viewing posts alphabetically
    Given a post exists with a title of "Abe rents storage space"
    And a post exists with a title of "Aaron opens his garage to friends"
    When I go to the list of posts
    Then I should see the posts sorted alphabetically
```

Make sure that fails. Then add the unit test for the controller; the very first
unit test for this controller. Here I'll use shoulda and
[jferris-mocha](http://github.com/jferris/mocha/tree/master):

```ruby
require 'test_helper'

class PostsControllerTest < ActionController::TestCase
  should "alphabeticalize the blog posts on GET to index" do
    Post.stubs(:alphabetical).returns([])
    get :index
    assert_received(Post, :alphabetical) {|expects| expects.with()}
  end
end
```

That's all you need because that's all that has deviated from the RESTful scaffold.

## Benefits

* See what deviates from the RESTful scaffold.
* Refactor with ease.
* Spend less time implementing controller unit tests.

## The Opposite of Benefits

* Requires your team to know the RESTful scaffold well.

So in summary, do write integration tests all the time, but don't
[TATFT](http://smartic.us/2008/8/15/tatft-i-feel-a-revolution-coming-on/).
**Relax those unit tests**.