Record network responses for easy stubbing of external calls.

Net recorder hooks into NetHTTP to record the outgoing request path and method and caches the response. Then you can switch on fakeweb and it will use the cache from the recording.

gem install fakeweb

gem install netrecorder

Anywhere you use fakeweb, you can use net recorder.

Record all responses:

NetRecorder.config do |config|
  config.cache_file       = File.join(RAILS_ROOT, 'fakeweb')
  config.record_net_calls = true
end

Save recorded responses:

NetRecorder.cache!

Use recorded cache with fakeweb:

NetRecorder.config do |config|
  config.cache_file = File.join(RAILS_ROOT, 'features', 'support', 'fakeweb')
  config.fakeweb    = true
end

Net recorder makes it easy to add a ‘scope’ to your recordings. Fakeweb doesn’t have a way to name a response. If you make a request to the same url twice and get a different response both times, fakeweb just stores the responses in an array and returns them in order. This means that whatever you are testing will have to maintain the order or else you won’t get the correct mocked data for your tests. So netrecorder allows you to set a scope that can be used when registering with fakeweb.

To record using scopes:

if NetRecorder.recording?
  NetRecorder.scope = 'first request'
  # request www.something.com
  # make a change that alters the return value from www.something.com
  NetRecorder.scope = "second request"
  # request www.something.com
end

To register the scoped cache with fakeweb:

if !NetRecorder.recording?
  FakeWeb.clean_registry # This will clear out any previous registrations so that our scope will not be added to the array of reponses
  NetRecorder.register_scope(scenario.name)
end

see cukes.info for more info on testing with Cucumber

# Find me in features/support/netrecorder.rb

NetRecorder.config do |config|
  config.cache_file = "#{File.dirname(__FILE__)}/../support/fakeweb"    
  if ENV['RECORD_WEB']
    config.record_net_calls = true
  else
    config.fakeweb = true
    FakeWeb.allow_net_connect = false
  end
end 

at_exit do
  if NetRecorder.recording?
    NetRecorder.cache!
  end
end

# Scope all the recordings to the scenario name!
Before do |scenario|
  if NetRecorder.recording?
    NetRecorder.scope = scenario.name
  else
    FakeWeb.clean_registry
    NetRecorder.register_scope(scenario.name)
  end
end

record mode (command line)

>> rake features RECORD_WEB=true

cache mode (command line)

>> rake features

StaleFish[http://github.com/jsmestad/stale_fish]

* Uses fixtures to store netrequests
* More configuration options
* Configure fixtures to atomically refresh themselves at an interval