MSDN Magazine - February 2009 - (Page 57)

.NET INTErop Getting Started With IronRuby And RSpec, Part 1 Ben Hall “That’s not what we asked for!” I’m sure most developers have heard this cry from a customer shortly after delivering the latest build. The customer could be yelling at the poor developer for various reasons—maybe the requirements were not correctly understood or part of the system simply did not work. Because customers are often unclear as to their own requirements, they will opt for the safety of the 100-page technical document that tries to define everything the system might have to do. Meanwhile, the developer struggles with undocumented legacy code, trying to understand how the app is intended to work while attempting to implement new requirements without breaking anything. Times are changing. New approaches to software development are aimed at solving these problems, helping you to meet the customer requirements at the first attempt without causing failures in the process. These approaches are taking advantage of languages such as Ruby, allowing you to create easily readable and maintainable code with much shorter development iterations. In this article, I will introduce you to Ruby and IronRuby and demonstrate some basics of Ruby interoperating with Microsoft .NET Framework-based code. I also explain how frameworks such as RSpec can be used to generate examples of how objects are intended to behave, providing both documentation and verification that the system is built correctly. This will set the stage for a future article in which I will explain acceptance testing in detail and demonstrate creating acceptance tests with IronRuby. To help write examples and define requirements you need a framework. There are many different approaches to writing automated acceptance tests or executable specifications. Some people use standard xUnit test frameworks successfully, while others use Fit and Fitness frameworks. I have found the best approach is to use Behavior-Driven Development (BDD). Dan North devised a BDD framework called JBehave (dannorth.net/introducing-bdd) as a way to define scenarios that describe the application’s behavior in a way that can be communicated to the whole team, regardless of technical ability. This article is based on a prerelease version of Ironruby. All information is subject to change. Defining Requirements and Examples in Code This article discusses: • ruby and Duck Typing • ruby and the Microsoft .NET Framework • Using Ironruby and rSpec Technologies discussed: Ironruby Code download: code.msdn.microsoft.com/mag200902Ironruby February 2009 57 http://www.dannorth.net/introducing-bdd http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/mag200902IronRuby

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of MSDN Magazine - February 2009

MSDN Magazine - February 2009 Contents Toolbox CLR Inside Out Data Points Cutting Edge Patterns In Practice Best Practices .Net Interop "Oslo" Basics Patterns Silverlight Under The Table Foundations Windows With C++ .NET Matters Going Places { End Bracket }

MSDN Magazine - February 2009

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