Functionally Testing ValidatesCaptcha

We here at Near-Time have been using the Rails plugin ValidatesCaptcha from Tore Darell for the last couple of months. The plugin worked great after I submitted a patch that fixed an issue with multiple calls to valid? deleting the CAPTCHA.

As a solution, it was great—I dropped it in, fought with RMagick and then had the spam on lockdown. But I was bugged that the docs omitted anything about how to functionally test the new validation. So I had to solve the problem. Here is some sample code for testing a model validated with a CAPTCHA via ValidatesCaptcha, straight from the Near-Time source code:

  def test_create_anonymous_comment
    @session[:user_id] = nil
    challenge = AngryMidgetPluginsInc::CaptchaImageChallenge.new
    challenge.generate
    challenge.write
    xhr(:post, :create,
               { :update_id => "uniq_1", 
                 :commit => "add", 
                 :context => spaces(:public_space).subdomain, 
                 :comment => { :body => "Some unique comment",
                               :name => ‘Anonymous User’,
                               :email => ‘sbw@ibiblio.org’,
                               :url => ‘http://www.thatswhatimtalkingabout.org/’,
                               :ip_address => ‘154.65.2.187’,
                               :captcha_id => challenge.id,
                               :captcha_validation => challenge.string,
                               :commentable_id => pages(:public_news_page).id,
                               :commentable_type => ‘Page’} }, @session)
    assert_response :success
    assert_equal AnonymousComment, assigns(:comment).class
  end

And here’s a similar bit for testing (not very different, but the novice may miss it):

    challenge = AngryMidgetPluginsInc::CaptchaImageChallenge.new
    challenge.generate
    challenge.write
    comment = AnonymousComment.create(:body => ‘some anonymous comment’,
                                      :ip_address => ‘154.65.2.187’,
                                      :captcha_id => challenge.id,
                                      :captcha_validation => challenge.string,
                                      :commentable => pages(:my_first_page))

The challenge object creation and write is magic that is generally handled for you behind the scenes by the plugin. This is the double edged sword of Rails plugins—they can offer you so much return on a few commands, but at the price that your app is less testable and you don’t understand what is hiding behind the abstraction.