Stubbing Chained Methods with Rspec

Question

I want to call a named_scope that will only return one record, but the named_scope returns an array, that's not a big deal as I can just chain it with .first:

Model.named_scope(param).first

and this works, what I am struggling with is how to stub the chained call. Does anyone have a reference or an answer on how I would go about achieving this with Rspec mocking?

Answer 1

I figured something out.

Client.stub!(:named_scope).and_return(@clients = mock([Client]))
@clients.stub!(:first).and_return(@client = mock(Client))

which allows me to call my controller:

@client = Client.named_scope(param).first

It works, but is there a better solution?

EDIT:

The release of rspec 1.2.6 allows us to use stub_chain meaning it can now be:

Client.stub_chain(:named_scope, :chained_call).and_return(@clients = [mock(Client)])

This was top of my head, as always check the api for specifics :)

Answer 2

Better version of

Client.stub!(:named_scope).and_return(@clients = mock([Client]))
@clients.stub!(:first).and_return(@client = mock(Client))

will be:

Client.should_receive(:named_scope).with(param).and_return do
  record = mock_model(Comm)
  record.should_receive(:do_something_else)
  [record]  
end