In ropenscilabs/vcr: Record 'HTTP' Calls to Disk

The docs assume you are using testthat for your unit tests.

use_vcr

You can then set up your package to use vcr with:

vcr::use_vcr()

This will:

• put vcr into the DESCRIPTION
• check that testthat is setup
• setup testthat if not
• set the recorded cassettes to be saved in and sourced from tests/fixtures
• setup a config file for vcr
• add an example test file for vcr
• make a .gitattributes file with settings for vcr
• make a ./tests/testthat/helper-vcr.R file

What you will see in the R console:

◉ Using package: vcr.example  
◉ assuming fixtures at: tests/fixtures  
✓ Adding vcr to Suggests field in DESCRIPTION  
✓ Creating directory: ./tests/testthat  
◉ Looking for testthat.R file or similar  
✓ tests/testthat.R: added  
✓ Adding vcr config to tests/testthat/helper-vcr.example.R  
✓ Adding example test file tests/testthat/test-vcr_example.R  
✓ .gitattributes: added  
◉ Learn more about `vcr`: https://books.ropensci.org/http-testing/

Protecting secrets

Secrets often turn up in API work. A common example is an API key. vcr saves responses from APIs as YAML files, and this will include your secrets unless you indicate to vcr what they are and how to protect them. The vcr_configure function has the filter_sensitive_data argument function for just this situation. The filter_sensitive_data argument takes a named list where the name of the list is the string that will be used in the recorded cassettes instead of the secret, which is the list item. vcr will manage the replacement of that for you, so all you need to do is to edit your helper-vcr.R file like this:

library("vcr") # *Required* as vcr is set up on loading
invisible(vcr::vcr_configure(
  dir = "../fixtures"
))
vcr::check_cassette_names()

Use the filter_sensitive_data argument in the vcr_configure function to show vcr how to keep your secret. The best way to store secret information is to have it in a .Renviron file. Assuming that that is already in place, supply a named list to the filter_sensitive_data argument.

library("vcr")
invisible(vcr::vcr_configure(
  filter_sensitive_data = list("<<<my_api_key>>>" = Sys.getenv('APIKEY')),  # add this
  dir = "../fixtures"
))
vcr::check_cassette_names()

Notice we wrote Sys.getenv('APIKEY') and not the API key directly, otherwise you'd have written your API key to a file that might end up in a public repo.

The will get your secret information from the environment, and make sure that whenever vcr records a new cassette, it will replace the secret information with <<<my_api_key>>>. You can find out more about this in the HTTP testing book chapter on security.

The addition of the line above will instruct vcr to replace any string in cassettes it records that are equivalent to your string which is stored as the APIKEY environmental variable with the masking string <<<my_api_key>>>. In practice, you might get a YAML that looks a little like this:

http_interactions:
- request:
    method: post
    ...
    headers:
      Accept: application/json, text/xml, application/xml, */*
      Content-Type: application/json
      api-key: <<<my_api_key>>>
    ...

Here, my APIKEY environmental variable would have been stored as the api-key value, but vcr has realised this and recorded the string <<<my_api_key>>> instead.

Once the cassette is recorded, vcr no longer needs the API key as no real requests will be made. Furthermore, as by default requests matching does not include the API key, things will work.

Now, how to ensure tests work in the absence of a real API key?

E.g. to have tests pass on continuous integration for external pull requests to your code repository.

• vcr does not need an actual API key for requests once the cassettes are created, as no real requests will be made.
• you still need to fool your package into believing there is an API key as it will construct requests with it. So add the following lines to a testthat setup file (e.g. tests/testthat/helper-vcr.R)

if (!nzchar(Sys.getenv("APIKEY"))) {
  Sys.setenv("APIKEY" = "foobar")
}

Using an .Renviron

A simple way to manage local environmental variables is to use an .Renviron file. Your .Renviron file might look like this:

APIKEY="mytotallysecretkey"

You can have this set at a project or user level, and usethis has the usethis::edit_r_environ() function to help edit the file.

ropenscilabs/vcr documentation built on Feb. 5, 2024, 5:58 p.m.