Last Updated: 2024-04-26

For years I used a gem (Ruby library) called attribute_normalizer that took user input (e.g. "description" or "name") and formatted it in certain ways (e.g. removing trailing whitespace). It worked via an initializer where I listed all the attributes it was supposed to normalize.

This worked for years.

Then they removed the feature without any warning. Only six months later, did I notice my data was looking odd in places.

I could have caught this mistake by having had a policy in place that for any library I use, I add at least one "canary test". The idea is that this test would execute a telling example of the gem's action. Once this test fails, the entire subsystem should be suspect and all instances deemed incorrect.

it 'normalizes name using attribute_normlizer (canary test for whole codebase)' do
  my_subject.name = ' Rome '
  my_subject.save
  expect(my_subject.name).to eq('Rome')
end

Lesson

For important dependencies, it's worth putting a test in place to ensure functionality keeps working between versions.