http://www.robertshowalter.com/articles/2007/06/23/write-at-least-simple-functional-tests-for-each-of-your-actions en-us 40 <p>If you&#8217;re like me, you focus on writing unit tests more than functional tests. Most of the key business logic should be in your models anyway, and it&#8217;s easier to test at that level.</p> <p>Nevertheless, it&#8217;s a good idea to at least write a basic functional test for each action to make sure the action at least runs through without any exceptions.</p> <p>If you run <a href="http://www.zenspider.com/ZSS/Products/ZenTest/">autotest</a> (which is a great tool), or at least run rake:test before any commits, these simple tests can catch boneheaded mistakes like one I made today.</p> <p>I modified a controller and added an instance varible, which I then referenced in a partial. Everything worked fine and it looked good in the browser, so I committed it.</p> <p>Unfortunately, I stupidly forgot that the partial was used in another context, and that action promptly broke, because I didn&#8217;t create the instance variable there. As it turns out, the proper fix was to move my instance variable out of the partial and into the main template.</p> <p>A simple functional test on each action would have revealed my mistake right away.</p> Sat, 23 Jun 2007 14:03:00 -0400 urn:uuid:60e50e8f-0379-4187-b8fd-47dd24e4ec16 Bob Showalter http://www.robertshowalter.com/articles/2007/06/23/write-at-least-simple-functional-tests-for-each-of-your-actions Rails