VCR's debug_logger and `git diff`
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I recently added the vcr gem to one of our repositories, and was adding tests for an external API.
One of my tests was passing, and I wanted to commit the VCR cassette, along with the test/code that went with it.
I had thought I’d rebuilt the VCR cassette a few minutes before, but when I did git status, none of the expected files showed up. VCR cassettes record API calls and store them as big .yml files, which should show up in git status:
This did not map to my expectation - I expected to see the VCR cassette.
Two tools to help find the missing cassettes #
First, I had to make sure the cassettes actually existed and were being used in my tests. Second, assuming the cassettes existed, I had to find them.
I checked the test_helper.rb, to see where the cassettes were supposed to be stashed:
VCR.configure do |config|
config.cassette_library_dir = "fixtures/vcr_cassettes"
config.hook_into :webmock
end
That directory location looked right. But we already had a test/fixtures/vcr_cassettes, and it was empty.
When I did a global find in the project for the name of the cassette I’d set, nothing came up, except for the test I was working in.
Where was this cassette? Did I even have VCR configured correctly?
I opened up the VCR docs to the #usage section, and found this line:
Rails and Minitest: Do not use ‘test/fixtures’ as the directory if you’re using Rails and Minitest (Rails will instead transitively load any files in that directory as models).
🤔
So maybe there was a problem with my directory structure?
VCR’s debug_logger #
I googled around, and found this useful article, which mentioned toggling debugger mode, so I updated the test_helper.rb block for VCR, sending debug information to $stderr, aka my terminal:
VCR.configure do |config|
config.cassette_library_dir = "fixtures/vcr_cassettes"
config.hook_into :webmock
config.debug_logger = $stderr # Added this line here
end
When I reran the test, I got lots of useful output:
# the following's been anonymized a bit
[Cassette: 'external_service_fetch_token'] Initialized with options: {:record=>:once, :match_requests_on=>[:method, :uri], :allow_unused_http_interactions=>true, :serialize_with=>:yaml, :persist_with=>:file_system}
[webmock] Handling request: [post https://service.com/give-me-a-token] (disabled: false)
[Cassette: 'external_service_fetch_token'] Initialized HTTPInteractionList with request matchers [:method, :uri] and 1 interaction(s): { [post https://service.com/give-me-a-token] => [200 "{\n \"access_token\" : \"aaabbbcccddd"] }
[Cassette: 'external_service_fetch_token'] Checking if [post https://service.com/give-me-a-token] matches [post https://service.com/give-me-a-token] using [:method, :uri]
[Cassette: 'external_service_fetch_token'] method (matched): current request [post https://service.com/give-me-a-token] vs [post https://service.com/give-me-a-token]
[Cassette: 'external_service_fetch_token'] uri (matched): current request [post https://service.com/give-me-a-token] vs [post https://service.com/give-me-a-token]
[Cassette: 'external_service_fetch_token'] Found matching interaction for [post https://service.com/give-me-a-token] at index 0: [200 "{\n \"access_token\" : \"aaabbbcccddd"]
[webmock] Identified request type (stubbed_by_vcr) for [post https://service.com/give-me-a-token]
This request was being recorded somewhere. Where was it?
git status had given me nothing. Maybe I didn’t delete this a while ago - maybe this was an old file that I’d committed long ago.
git diff development --name-only to the rescue! #
We all probably use git diff quite regularly, but I didn’t want to look at all of the different lines of code between my current branch and development. I’d written a lot of code, and development had changed a lot with other people’s code. I would just rebase my branch on top before finalizing the PR anyway.
But I still wondered if I had these VCR cassettes committed in my current branch somewhere. Maybe I misunderstood where they were getting saved.
So I ran git diff development --name-only It shows just the names of the files that differ between the specified branch and your own branch.
I knew I’d changed about fifteen files, but when I ran the above command, I got back a list of over 100 files that had changed.
Therefore, to further refine your results, you might want to limit the results to just the filenames on your branch that differ from the comparison branch.
git diff development...current_branch --name-only.
Here’s the output I got:
threatsim/Gemfile
threatsim/Gemfile.lock
threatsim/app/controllers/api/external_service/things_controller.rb
threatsim/app/models/external_service_token_validator.rb
threatsim/config/routes.rb
threatsim/fixtures/vcr_cassettes/external_service_expired_token.yml
threatsim/fixtures/vcr_cassettes/external_service_generate_token.yml
threatsim/fixtures/vcr_cassettes/external_service_token_validation.yml
threatsim/test/controllers/api/external_service/things_controller_test.rb
threatsim/test/models/external_service_token_validator_test.rb
threatsim/test/test_helper.rb
Boom. Those *.yml files are what I needed.
I’d been on a long goose chase because I didn’t think to run this command any earlier.
What had happened to my .yml files? The VCR configuration told the truth! They got placed in fixtures/vcr_cassettes/, while I was expecting them to be in test/fixtures/vcr_cassettes. I’d committed them previously, and forgotten or never noticed that the fixtures directory was in the root of the application, not nested in the test directory.
This was a minor difference, but it took longer than I would have expected to uncover. But now I have a new tool in my git toolbox to use in the future.