Screencast: Taping API Interactions with VCR

httpv://youtube.com/watch?v=r3SASkzyquc

A rather long and rambling demonstration of Myron Marston’s VCR library. This screencast covers:

  • What VCR is, and why you might want to use it
  • Configuring VCR in a Rails 3 app
  • Creating Cucumber helpers for organizing VCR cassettes
  • Starting and stoping VCR recordings using both the block form and insert/eject methods.
  • Creating a simple VCR cassettes UI and recording live API interactions in development mode.

11 comments

    1. This took longer than I expected to record, and unfortunately by the time I was done I simply couldn’t justify spending even MORE time editing it down. I figured the raw video was better than no video at all.

  1. Appreciate this, but does it need to be a screencast? There’s very little to look at for most of the video, and a lot of uninteresting banter. I’d much rather you just write an article that I can glean from.

    1. I’m still experimenting with the form. As I said to Markw below, I’d much rather have put up something shorter and more tightly edited, but I didn’t have time to work any more on it after recording.

  2. Thanks for the screencast, Avdi.

    I’m about to add authentication with OmniAuth into a project and have been investigating how to write end-to-end tests that don’t rely on the network. Your screencast has given me plenty to think about.

    I was also thinking of producing a similar guide when I’m done, but based on Sinatra, rather than Rails. If you’d like to contribute ideas, feedback and/or material let me know.

  3. This screencast is a bit old but I found it really useful. I did a “transcript” of it https://gist.github.com/1646567
    If nothing else it shows how you can compress rambling into text 😉

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