Moxy

Moxy (or moxy) is a programmable mock proxy. It is an HTTP proxy exposing web hooks that you can use in order to tell it what to do, and when to do it.

For example, you might want to set up that a request to http://google.com will return the text boo hoo. Thats easy:

$ curl -d "mock_text=stub_request(:get, 'http://google.com').to_return(:body=>'boo hoo')" http://localhost:9292/__setup__ 

However, moxy was not made just for one-offs. It was made in order to allow you to use such things in automated integration tests.

Here is an example in Ruby:

it "should handle google crashes" do
	# setup responses at moxie.
	HTTParty.post('http://localhost:9292/__setup__', 
	          :body=>{
	            :mock_text=>'stub_request(:get, "http://google.com?q=moxie").to_return(:status=>401)'
	          })

	r = Google.get("http://google.com?q=moxie")

	r.code.must_equal 401
end

See more languages and use cases in /examples.

But these kind of things can already be done using rack-test, and other abstraction/mocking frameworks in other languages. Moxy can be an extremely fitting answer to your problems when:

• The juice is not worth the squeeze. You need to integration test but you don't want/need to invest effort in convoluted HTTP abstracting test code and helpers. Just set up a real response and go.

• The language / platform is not worth the squeeze. Some platforms and languages just aren't as great as Ruby. In .NET, for example, some parts of the framework don't allow for (real) testing. Using moxy clears this up pretty easily!.

• You need a proxy which is programmable. Reply with pre-programmed responses, send back files, or just pre-program to return all sorts of errors that blow in your face.

Run gem install moxy

$ moxy  # no arguments, default to localhost, 9292
$ moxy integration-notifier.dev.com 3000 

$ git clone https://github.com/jondot/moxy
$ cd moxy; rackup

A web app is great for a dedicated integration server. Moxy will run on any rack handler.

1. Set http://moxy-host:port as a system proxy, or a proxy in your HTTP library in your code.
2. Issue any number of POSTs to your http://moxy-host:port/__setup__ endpoint with a POST variable named mock_text.

Below are some examples of mock_text (in each, second line describes result).

stub_request :get, "http://google.com"
(Returns an empty content with 200 HTTP status code)


stub_request(:get, "http://google.com").to_return(:body => "boo hoo!")
(Returns boo hoo! as content)


stub_request(:get, "http://google.com").to_return(:body => "boo hoo!", :code => 500)
(Returns boo hoo! as content)

Since currently moxy uses WebMock under the hood (that may change), this will be WebMock's syntax, and you can go learn about it for more examples.

If you access http://moxy-host:port/__setup__ in your browser, you'll be presented with the moxy console:

Fork, implement, add tests, pull request, get my everlasting thanks and a respectable place here :).

• github.com/omcnet

Copyright (c) 2011 Dotan Nahum @jondot. See MIT-LICENSE for further details.