Stub out a request to google maps api in my tests

Question

I try to mock out geocoding request by using FakeWeb (in cucumber/rails). When I block all http requests I get the message:

Real HTTP connections are disabled. Unregistered request: GET 
http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/json?..... (FakeWeb::NetConnectNotAllowedError)

So I registered the url by trying:

FakeWeb.register_uri(:any, %r|http://maps\.google\.com/maps/|, :json 
=> { 
    "status": "OK", 
....} 

I get the error "A JSON text must at least contain two octets!" (MultiJson::DecodeError) I'm not sure what information to return. And how FakeWeb can return json data.. Does someone have a solution for stubbing out server requests to the google maps api?

Answer 1

The "A JSON text must at least contain two octets!" error indicates that the JSON string your are using to stub the response is not valid. Try running MultiJson.decode(json_string) with your json string before stubbing with it; that should help you pinpoint the error.

If you don't want to deal with the details of stubbing the google maps API, you may want to look into using VCR; it will record a real response for you and use that to stub the request on subsequent test runs. It's a much easier way to get realistic stubbed responses in your tests.