Page History

...

Tests should describe how the system responds to certain inputs. They should not simply duplicate the code under test.

Avoid over-mocking.

Ruby makes it very easy to stub methods and specify return values. Often, this can lead to fragile tests which don't perform any useful validation. If a test stubs every call made by a method, for instance, the test doesn't verify that the method actually works; simultaneously, the test will break any time the method changes.

Mocks couple tests and code, and should be used very sparingly. Valid reasons to use mocks include:

1. Calls to external services which cannot or should not be made during tests.
2. Calls which are expensive to perform (I/O) and irrelevant to the test at hand.
3. Calls which would require an unreasonable amount of setup and fixtures and are irrelevant to the test at hand.

When in doubt, it's better to not mock.

Minimize test suite execution time.

...

If you see a failure and you suspect it was caused by some intermittent problem, e.g. a timeout that is too short or an external service being down, it is not enough to simply re-run the tests. Fix the problem. If a problem truly cannot be fixed, document why, catch the specific error that cannot be fixed, and throw a more meaningful one.

HTML

...

Use semantically meaningful elements where possible.

...

Minimize the overall depth of HTML to decrease page size, increase readability, and improve rendering speed.

Avoid conditional logic in views for partial display

Use view helpers for arbitrary display of content

See This example and description from Stack Overflow. Use Rails helpers to dynamically generate highlight dynamic HTML with widely varying elements and structure. Use Rails partials to generate more static content.

CSS with Sass

Earthdata Search uses SCSS to generate its CSS. It follows the guidelines for scalable CSS outlined by SMACSS, with key items reproduced in this document. The CI build checks CSS style using CSS Lint. Developers are strongly encouraged to read the CSS Lint rules.

...