Testing SOAP Webservices with RSpec

SOAP webservices are widely used in enterprise environments. Although they feel a bit clumsy in comparison to slim REST services, sometimes you have to deal with them.

The great thing is, to test such a service you are often free to use any tool you like. I like RSpec!

To query a web service you just need a few lines of code. I recommend Savon as SOAP client. It is used as shown here:

require 'rubygems'
require 'savon'

WSDL_URL  = 'http://www.webservicex.net/geoipservice.asmx?wsdl'

client = Savon::Client.new WSDL_URL
response = client.get_geo_ip do |soap|
  soap.body = { "wsdl:IPAddress" => "209.85.149.106" }
end
puts response

The response object can be converted to hash with the to_hash method, so you can fetch all values simply like you would do it with any other hash.

Now, the rest should be easy and is just a normal RSpec test:

require 'rubygems'
require 'savon'

WSDL_URL  = 'http://www.webservicex.net/geoipservice.asmx?wsdl'

RETURN_CODE_OK    = "1"
RETURN_CODE_ERROR = "0"

describe "Geo IP Webservice at #{WSDL_URL}" do
  
  # helper method
  def get_geo_ip_result ip
    response = @client.get_geo_ip do |soap|
      soap.body = {"wsdl:IPAddress" => ip}
    end
    response.to_hash[:get_geo_ip_response][:get_geo_ip_result]
  end
  
  before :all do
    @client = Savon::Client.new WSDL_URL
  end

  it "should yield a country name" do
    result = get_geo_ip_result "209.85.149.106"
    result[:country_name].should_not be_nil
    result[:return_code].should eql(RETURN_CODE_OK)
  end
 
  it "should return error for malformed ip address" do
    result = get_geo_ip_result "not.an.ip.address"
    result[:return_code].should eql(RETURN_CODE_ERROR)
  end
 
  it "should fail if no ip address is submitted" do
    lambda { @client.get_geo_ip }.should raise_error
  end

  # ...

end

Happy testing!

EDIT:

@dbloete pointed me to the fact that with RSpec 2 you can expect errors even more readable:

it "should fail if no ip address is submitted" do
  expect { @client.get_geo_ip }.to raise_error
end