geek + red sox + cooking = peter ryan

Over the weekend I spent some time working on some generators for SeaCucumber the javascript testing framework I am working on with Mike Ward. There is quite a bit of redundant HTML code that serves as plumbing to the framework and a generator would simplify that.

I found the most useful generator documentation is on the RoR wiki: Understanding Generators.

The generator code itself was very simple although it will be interesting to try for a more complex generator.

class SeacucumberGenerator < Rails::Generator::NamedBase
  def manifest
    record do |m|
      m.directory File.join('test/javascripts')
      m.directory File.join('public/javascripts')      

      m.file 'unittest.js', File.join("public", "javascripts", "unittest.js")
      m.file 'test.css', File.join("test", "javascripts", "test.css")

      m.template('javascript_template.js',
          File.join("public", "javascripts", "#{file_name}.js"))
      m.template('seacucumber_template.html',
          File.join("test", "javascripts", "#{file_name}_test.html"))
    end
  end
end

This generator does three basic things.

• m.directory - Creates directories if necessary.
• m.file - Copies static files without modification to the target directory.
• m.template - Executes the two templates using ERB and writes them to the target location.

I used a NamedBase which take an argument. For example I might run this:

script/generate seacucumber MyFunction

Rails::Generator::NamedBase exposes a number of accessible attributes which are created from the argument. The most useful thing this class does is provide a bunch of attributes you can use from the manifest or template. It takes a trip to the source code to find out what they all are. To save time I thought I’d list them along with their values which follow standard rails inflection rules:

• name MyFunction
• class_name MyFunction
• singular_name my_function
• plural_name my_functions
• table_name my_functions
• class_path (blank)
• file_path my_function
• class_nesting (blank)
• class_nesting_depth 0

Next I need to add a bit more sophistication to the templates I am generating to make them sensible for when someone is starting to develop a JavaScript function and needs to generate the Sea Cucumber plumbing.

Michael Ward and I are working on extracting the Script.aculo.us Test.Unit.Runner into a rails gem / plugin. We used this testing framework at our last client and we found it very useful. We would like an easier way to use the testing framework (in and our of Rails). We have called the project Sea Cucumber and are hosting it on RubyForge.