Autotest using Watchr getting notified via Growl (Articles)

Autotest using Watchr getting notified via Growl

By Amit Samtani (amitsamtani)

I was taking a look at ZenTest a while ago, especially the autotest functionality. As stated in the ZenTest site, autotest:

Improves feedback by running tests continuously.
Continually runs tests based on files you’ve changed.
Get feedback as soon as you save. Keeps you in your editor allowing you to get stuff done faster.

To add more bang to your buck, you can get continuous notifications from growl every time you save a file, alerting you if any of your previous test cases have failed.

Googling around I wanted to see if this can be tied into testing with CakePHP. If I did a horrible job googling and there is already something out there that mimics this functionality please send me a link. Anyways, I stumbled across Watchr. Watchr is a tool that monitors a directory tree, and triggers a user defined action whenever an observed file is modified. At that point trigger a CakePHP test suite command line argument and send the results to growl. And there we have it, continuous testing with growl notifications on CakePHP using Watchr.

Step 1: Install the Watchr gem: http://github.com/mynyml/watchr
Step 2: Upload images that growl will use to display passed/failed cases in the directory ~/.watchr_images/

Step 3: Set up a watchr configuration file in app/config/watchr.rb

Step 4: Every time you develop have watchr runing. Type the following in your root directory:

watchr app/config/watchr.rb

watchr config file:

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$cake = "/Applications/MAMP/bin/php5/bin/php /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/yourProject/cake/console/cake.php"



watch('app/(models|controllers)/(.*).php')  { |m| test_changed_model_or_controller(m[0]) }

watch('app/tests/cases/(models|controllers)/(.*).test.php')  { |m| test_changed_test_case(m[0]) }

watch('app/config/(.*).php') { |m| test_app() }

watch('app/(app_controller|app_model).php')  { |m| test_app() }



def test_changed_model_or_controller(file)

  type = file.split('/')[1]

  name = file.split('/')[2].split('.')[0]

  run "#{$cake} testsuite app case #{type}/#{name}" 

end



def test_changed_test_case(file)

  type = file.split('/')[3]

  name = file.split('/')[4].split('.')[0]

  run "#{$cake} testsuite app case #{type}/#{name}"

end



def test_app()

  run "#{$cake} testsuite app all"

end



def run(cmd) 

  puts(cmd)

  result = `#{cmd}`

  growl result rescue nil

  puts result

end



def growl(message)

  message = message.split('---------------------------------------------------------------')[3].split('Time taken by tests')[0]

  growlnotify = `which growlnotify`.chomp

  image = message.include?('fails') ? "~/.watchr_images/failed.png" : "~/.watchr_images/passed.png"

  options = "-w -n Watchr --image '#{File.expand_path(image)}' -m '#{message}'"

  system %(#{growlnotify} #{options} &)

end