Spiker

Spiker helps you validate your ideas under test. It can also be a basic educational tool, giving the learner a minimal framework to start writing and testing their Ruby code.

Install it directly:

$ gem install spiker

In the terminal, change directory to someplace where you want to collect your spikes:

$ cd ~/spikes

Then, create a new spike:

$ spiker simple my_spike
$ cd my_spike

Using the "simple" formula, Spiker will create an app.rb file, a Gemfile, a Guardfile and an .env file for configuration, to be read by the dotenv gem. The app.rb file will contain boilerplate for both Minitest and a Ruby class in the same file:

require 'dotenv/load'
require 'minitest'
require 'minitest/autorun'
require 'minitest/reporters'

Minitest::Reporters.use!

class MySpikeTest < Minitest::Test
  def test_name
    assert_equal "Fred", MySpike.new(name: "Fred").name
  end

  def test_default_env_value
    assert_equal "test", ENV["TEST_VALUE"]
  end
end

class MySpike
  attr_accessor :name
  def initialize(name:)
    @name = name
  end
end

From here, the user should be able to start Guard and immediately begin development in a red-green fashion.

The simple option shown above puts the code and the tests together in a single file, which can be useful in a number of circumstances. Similar to the simple option, the given option puts the code and tests in the same file but offers the user the Minitest::Spec and ::Given syntax options. Learn more about the Given/When/Then syntax on Wikipedia, or the work of Jim Weirich related to Rspec with Given.

The multi option places directories and files into a named directory, and is intended to flesh out a more complex spike that includes a tests directory and test_helper.rb, a lib directory, README.md, etc. The overall workflow is still the same:

$ spiker multi my_spike
$ cd my_spike

Bundle will run automatically and the user will be able to start development in a red-green fashion just the same as with the simple spike. There is also a Rakefile provided, the Guardfile is modified from the simple version to include files in directories, and simple tests are predefined.

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake test to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and the created tag, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/norlinga/spiker.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.