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copied!<p>Great questions and great discussion. @ryanb and @bkeepers mention that they only write two types of tests. I take a similar approach, but have a third type of test:</p> <ul> <li>Unit tests: isolated tests, typically, but not always, against plain ruby objects. My unit tests don't involve the DB, 3rd party API calls, or any other external stuff.</li> <li>Integration tests: these are still focused on testing one class; the differences is that they integrate that class with the external stuff I avoid in my unit tests. My models will often have both unit tests and integration tests, where the unit tests focus in the pure logic that can be tested w/o involving the DB, and the integration tests will involve the DB. In addition, I tend to test 3rd party API wrappers with integration tests, using VCR to keep the tests fast and deterministic, but letting my CI builds make the HTTP requests for real (to catch any API changes).</li> <li>Acceptance tests: end-to-end tests, for an entire feature. This isn't just about UI testing via capybara; I do the same in my gems, which may not have an HTML UI at all. In those cases, this exercises whatever the gem does end-to-end. I also tend to use VCR in these tests (if they make external HTTP requests), and like in my integration tests, my CI build is setup to make the HTTP requests for real.</li> </ul> <p>As far as mocking goes, I don't have a "one size fits all" approach. I've definitely overmocked in the past, but I still find it to be a very useful technique, especially when using something like <a href="https://github.com/xaviershay/rspec-fire" rel="noreferrer">rspec-fire</a>. In general, I mock collaborators playing roles freely (particularly if I own them, and they are service objects) and try to avoid it in most other cases.</p> <p>Probably the biggest change to my testing over the last year or so has been inspired by <a href="https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/" rel="noreferrer">DAS</a>: whereas I used to have a <code>spec_helper.rb</code> that loads the entire environment, now I explicitly load just the class-under test (and any dependencies). Besides the improved test speed (which does make a huge difference!) it helps me identify when my class-under-test is pulling in too many dependencies.</p>

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