Running rspec after you deploy

OK, so you've got Capistrano going for deploying you app to a server. Now you should also run your tests there just to ensure everything's A-OK. Here's what I did.

deploy:spec task

The first thing was to make server-specific versions of several files, namely:

• config/database.yml.deploy
• config/environments/production.rb.deploy
• config/environments/test.rb.deploy

The database.yml.deploy is your server-side database.yml file. It just needs a production: and test: configurations (not development:), with the database name and credentials for access on the server.

Optionally, you can also create server-specific environment files. I did this because, for example, my local dev machine uses smtp for email while the server I use sendmail.

Some people just make these in the shared/ directory on the server rather than deploy them, but I prefer to keep all my files in the Subversion repos, even these.

Note: I originally tried to avoid this multiple conf file thing by adding a new environment called "staging", which would be my test environment on the server. But this ran into several issues, basically going against the grain where some plugins assumed just the 3 standard environment names (including rspec itself and fixture_replacement). Even as I worked through these issues making some custom changes, it still gave me problems so I backed out.

Next, we add a few custom tasks to the Capfile,

• task :after - copy the server-specific files
• task :spec - run rake spec on the server
• task :story - run stories/all.rb on the server

Here's the code:

namespace :deploy do

  task :after, :roles => :app do

    # config on server

    run "cd #{release_path}/config              && cp -f database.yml.deploy database.yml"

    run "cd #{release_path}/config/environments && cp -f production.rb.deploy production.rb"

    run "cd #{release_path}/config/environments && cp -f test.rb.deploy test.rb"

  end

  task :spec, :roles => :app do

    run "cd #{current_path} && rake db:test:prepare RAILS_ENV=production" # copy schema from production rather than development

    run "cd #{current_path} && rake spec RAILS_ENV=production"

  end

  task :story, :roles => :app do

    run "cd #{current_path} && rake db:test:prepare RAILS_ENV=production"

    run "cd #{current_path} && ruby stories/all.rb"

  end

end

after "deploy:finalize_update", "deploy:after"

Note, with "RAILS_ENV=production" we tell rspec to setup the current db schema from the production environment, rather than the default development one. Its not actually running any tests against the production datatbase (although be sure you have backups till you know for sure!)

Now, when you "cap deploy" it'll copy the *.deploy files to their useful names. And you can run your specs with

$ cap deploy:spec

$ cap deploy:story 

Getting the Results

The next step is to generate the output of the runs into a file that can be viewed in a browser.

There's probably a better way to do this but I just keep a server-side version of spec.opts

• spec/spec.opts.deploy

In particular, my specifies html output format,

--format
html
--loadby
mtime

And when we run the tests, we'll pipe the output to files in a private directory. That directory should be protected from prying eyes. So we create a file in the shared directory, lets say app/shared/private.htaccess file like this:

AuthUserFile /path/to/app/public/private/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName "Protected files"
AuthType Basic

<Limit GET>
require valid-user
</Limit> 

(in my case its

AuthUserFile /home/foobar/www/public/private/.htpasswd

where www is a symlink to ~/apps/myapp/current/public)

And generate a .htpasswd file, something like this

    $ cd ~/apps/myapp/shared

    $ htpasswd -c .htpasswd admin

    New password: 

    Re-type new password: 

    Adding password for user admin

Thus, the Capfile changes to

namespace :deploy do

  task :after, :roles => :app do

    # config on server

    run "cd #{release_path}/config              && cp -f database.yml.deploy database.yml"

    run "cd #{release_path}/config/environments && cp -f production.rb.deploy production.rb"

    run "cd #{release_path}/config/environments && cp -f test.rb.deploy test.rb"

    # spec on server

    run "cd #{release_path}/spec && cp -f spec.opts.deploy spec.opts"

    run "cd #{release_path} && mkdir private"

    run "cd #{release_path} && chmod 755 private"

    run "cd #{release_path}/private && cp -f #{shared_path}/private.htaccess .htaccess"

    run "cd #{release_path}/private && cp -f #{shared_path}/private.htpasswd .htpasswd"    

    # symlink the ActiveScaffold frontend

    run "cd #{release_path}/vendor/plugins/active_scaffold/frontends && ln -s #{release_path}/app/views/a_s_frontends/tablenav ." 

  end

  task :spec, :roles => :app do

    run "cd #{current_path} && rake db:test:prepare RAILS_ENV=production" # copy schema from production rather than development

    run "cd #{current_path} && rake spec RAILS_ENV=production >public/private/specs.html"

  end

  task :story, :roles => :app do

    run "cd #{current_path} && rake db:test:prepare RAILS_ENV=production"

    run "cd #{current_path} && ruby stories/all.rb >public/private/stories.txt"

  end

end

after "deploy:finalize_update", "deploy:after"

Now when you run

$ cap deploy:spec

$ cap deploy:story 

You can get the results by pointing your browser to

http://www.yoursite.com/private/specs.html

http://www.yoursite.com/private/stories.txt 

NOTE, I believe html output is coming soon to story runner.

One more NOTE, I havent gotten the htpasswd to work under my mongrel server deployment. When I do I'll change this message and correct this article.