How to unit test a method for timeout exception in ruby - ruby-on-rails

Question

I want to test a method which makes a call to a service, if the call to that service times out I am displaying a negative feedback to user. How to unittest the timeout use case ??
My method looks like:
def method
x = callservice()
if x[:value]
display_positve_feedback("positive")
else
display_negative_feedback("negative")
end
rescue Timeout::Error => e
display_negative_feedback("Timeout, please wait for 5 mins and check again")
end
end
I have mocked callservice but how to I make that service Timeout to check the timeout use case???

Answer 1

You don't use a return code. If you add it, you could test for the method result.
Example:
def method
begin
x = callservice()
if x[:value]
display_positve_feedback("positive")
return true
else
display_negative_feedback("negative")
return false
end
rescue Timeout::Error => e
display_negative_feedback("Timeout, please wait for 5 mins and check again")
return nil
end
raise "This should never happen"
end
Now you can test on true, falseor nil.

Answer 2

Suppressing exceptions is usually not a good practice that I would recommend to anyone.
When you catch (rescue) the timeout exception, re-raise it (or your own application-specific one) in the rescue code and have the caller (your test) check that an exception is thrown for the timeout.
You could use assert_raise or expect raise_error, for example, depending on what testing framework you use.
Using an exception, the calling code only needs to know about a potential exception rather than having to check for specific return values, which makes the code simpler and more clear.

Answer 3

Stub the callservice method to raise a Timeout::Error. How you'll do that depends on what testing framework you're using. For example, in RSpec it might look something like this:
my_obj.stub(:callservice) { raise Timeout::Error }
expect(my_obj).to receive(:display_negative_feedback)
.with("Timeout, please wait for 5 mins and check again")
my_obj.method