Testing Examples for the Facebook SDK Grails Plugin

On a recent client project, I used the Facebook SDK plugin (http://grails.org/plugin/facebook-sdk) to integrate Facebook into our Grails app. I’ve never worked with this plugin before (or done any Facebook development for that matter), so it was a learning experience. It’s a nice plugin, and makes working with Facebook much, much easier.

There isn’t any information out there about testing this, so I thought I would share a few simple examples for people who are just starting out. These examples can be tested by simply modifying the code that comes with the sample code (https://github.com/benorama/grails-facebook-sdk-demo), then adding a test class for the WebsiteController.

The example below is a very trivial example, and meant to only demonstrate how to mock some of these objects. I made some modifications to the sample code that comes with the plugin to make it shorter for this example. Here’s what my sample controller code looks like now…

import com.restfb.exception.FacebookOAuthException
import grails.plugin.facebooksdk.FacebookContext
import grails.plugin.facebooksdk.FacebookGraphClient
import grails.converters.JSON

class WebsiteController {
static defaultAction = 'index'
FacebookContext facebookContext

def beforeInterceptor = {
log.info "START ${actionUri} with params=${params}"
 }
def afterInterceptor = {
log.info "END ${actionUri}"
}

def index = {
if (facebookContext.app.id && facebookContext.authenticated) {
String token = facebookContext.user.token
if (token) {
try {
def user = getDataFromFacebook(token, facebookContext.user.id.toString())
//do something with user
} catch (FacebookOAuthException exception) {
//handle exception
}
}
}
}

def publishPost = {
try {
def user = getDataFromFacebook(facebookContext.user.token, facebookContext.user.id.toString())
//do something with user
} catch (Exception e) {
Map resp = [status: 'error', message: g.message(code: "generic.system.error")]
render resp as JSON
}
Map resp = [status: 'success', message: 'Message published']
render resp as JSON
}

def getDataFromFacebook(token, userId) {
FacebookGraphClient facebookGraphClient = new FacebookGraphClient(token)
return facebookGraphClient.fetchObject(userId)
}
}

There are two actions in this controller; the default index action (which I modified from the downloaded sample code), and a publishPost action which returns a JSON response.

Here is my test class with two simple tests, one for each action…

import grails.test.mixin.*
import grails.plugin.facebooksdk.FacebookContext
import grails.plugin.facebooksdk.FacebookContextUser 

@TestFor(WebsiteController)
class WebsiteControllerTests {
void setUp() {}
void tearDown() {}

void testIndex() {
def facebookContext = mockFor(FacebookContext)
def facebookContextUser = mockFor(FacebookContextUser)
def facebookContextApp = mockFor(FacebookContextApp)

def facebookUser
def facebookUserId = "56789"

facebookContext.demand.isAuthenticated { -> return true }
facebookContextApp.demand.getId { -> return 24 }
facebookContextUser.demand.getToken { -> return "123456789" }
facebookContextUser.demand.getId { -> return facebookUserId }

controller.metaClass.getDataFromFacebook{ token, userId ->
facebookUser = ["firstName":"TestFirst", "lastName":"TestLast", "userId":userId]
return facebookUser
}

controller.facebookContext = facebookContext.createMock()
controller.facebookContext.user = facebookContextUser.createMock()
controller.facebookContext.app = facebookContextApp.createMock()

controller.index()
assert facebookUserId == facebookUser.userId
}

void testPublishPost() {
def facebookContext = mockFor(FacebookContext)
def facebookContextUser = mockFor(FacebookContextUser)

def facebookUser
def facebookUserId = "56789"

facebookContextUser.demand.getToken { -> return "123456789" }
facebookContextUser.demand.getId { -> return facebookUserId }

controller.metaClass.getDataFromFacebook{ token, userId ->
facebookUser = ["firstName":"TestFirst", "lastName":"TestLast", "userId":userId]
return facebookUser
}

controller.facebookContext = facebookContext.createMock()
controller.facebookContext.user = facebookContextUser.createMock()

controller.publishPost()

assert '{"status":"success","message":"Message published"}' == response.text
assert "success" == response.json.status
}
}

You should be able to copy and paste this code, and the tests should pass. Then you can play around with the code and start writing more tests that fit with your code.

Hopefully these examples will help someone else with testing code that uses the Facebook SDK Grails plugin.

About the Author

Object Partners profile.

One thought on “Testing Examples for the Facebook SDK Grails Plugin

  1. Nithya says:

    Please help to clear session data in facebook,

    I have used facebook sdk

    but how it is possible,

    Please share code.

    Thanks & Regards,
    Nithya

  2. Hi Nithya,
    I’m sorry, but I don’t know the answer to this question. I didn’t have to do that in my code.

    Amy

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Related Blog Posts
Natively Compiled Java on Google App Engine
Google App Engine is a platform-as-a-service product that is marketed as a way to get your applications into the cloud without necessarily knowing all of the infrastructure bits and pieces to do so. Google App […]
Building Better Data Visualization Experiences: Part 2 of 2
If you don't have a Ph.D. in data science, the raw data might be difficult to comprehend. This is where data visualization comes in.
Unleashing Feature Flags onto Kafka Consumers
Feature flags are a tool to strategically enable or disable functionality at runtime. They are often used to drive different user experiences but can also be useful in real-time data systems. In this post, we’ll […]
A security model for developers
Software security is more important than ever, but developing secure applications is more confusing than ever. TLS, mTLS, RBAC, SAML, OAUTH, OWASP, GDPR, SASL, RSA, JWT, cookie, attack vector, DDoS, firewall, VPN, security groups, exploit, […]