Having troubles with expect_any_instance_of behavior? How to expect n number of times a method is invoked?

16 Aug Having troubles with expect_any_instance_of behavior? How to expect n number of times a method is invoked?

In case you are having troubles to use the

expect_any_instance_of

From Rspec, guess what, it is not only you, many of us have faced the same troubles before, you can see it here in the thread discussion
https://github.com/rspec/rspec-mocks/issues/910

I really agree with this argument:

The name of the method is “expect_any_instance_of” so I would expect this to mean that any instance could receive it. Instead, you’ve implemented it so that it refers to a single instance. So really, “expect_any_instance_of” actually means “expect_exactly_one_instance_of” and the name “expect_any_instance_of” is deceptive in my opinion and a violation of the Principle of Least Surprise.

So, to make the long story short here is what I ended up, thanks to the last comment by MaxPleaner

I have a class that makes a retry to the database let’s say

class InvoiceFinder
def self.find_with_retry
tries = 2
time_span_start = Time.zone.now
loop do
params = { user_ids: user_ids, start: time_span_start }
invoices = InvoceQuery.new(params).upcoming_invoices
if(invoices.present? || tries <= 0
break
else
time_span_start += 5.days
tries -= 1
end
end

invoices
end
end

In order to make sure the retry works we could have some Rspec just like this:

context 'when there is more than 1 retry from the database' do
before do
@counting_executions = 0
allow_any_instance_of(InvoceQuery).to receive(:upcoming_invoices) do
@counting_executions += 1
[]
end
end

it 'makes three retries to get data from the databases' do
InvoiceFinder.find_with_retry
expect(@counting_executions).to eq 3
end
end

There you, let me know any comments and thoughts, have you used any other strategy to test these sort of scenarios?
Keep learning, coding and relax.

H.