Cucumber Recipes

Recipe 34

Play Back Canned Network Data Using VCR

Problem

You’re testing an app that relies on one or more third-party, HTTP-based APIs. You’re worried about what will happen to your test results if one of the APIs you use times out or starts returning different data than what you expected.

Ingredients

• VCR,^[220] a library that can record a live HTTP interaction and then play it back during testing

• WebMock^[221] for simulating web traffic

Solution

Before we start writing the code for this recipe, let’s talk about application styles. There’s a whole class of apps whose usefulness comes from the way they tie together data sources from around the Web. Consider, for instance, the Influence Explorer civic project from Sunlight Labs.^[222] This site ...