Hey Matt, Thanks a lot for your elaborated response!
After reading this excellent thread about how to pass state between steps: http://www.mail-archive.com/rspec-users@rubyforge.org/msg06296.html I realized 1. I am not alone in this boat :) 2. that if I write "I go to", "my profile page" there is an implicit assumption -as you note below- that there is only one user so there is no harm in using this assumption in my steps. If there are several users in a scenario then I have to explicitly name users ("when Alice goes to her profile page", "when Bob presses the "Send" button, etc.) In both cases my steps remain reusable, in fact. What does not seem nice to me -and what I wanted to evade- is to write this kind of feature: Scenario: Create album from scratch Given I am logged in as "pepito" When "pepito" goes to his photos page And "pepito" follows "New album" It seems redundant. Once I know I am pepito in the feature I should not have to define it in each step. It's like with spoken language. 3. using instance variables to pass state in the course of a features makes step definitions too coupled. (I have not experienced this but read it in the thread and it seems logical) That said, I am still a starter with cucumber so I might come back and reassess my decisions :) Once again, thank you for your suggestions! Balint Matt Wynne wrote: > On 11 Mar 2009, at 18:52, Balint Erdi wrote: > >> User.find_by_login(login_name) || Factory(:user_with_password, :login >> >> case page_name >> You have a nil object when you didn't expect it! >> case page_name >> >> when /my profile page/i >> member_profile_path(:id => User.first) >> ... >> end >> >> However, I am not at all content with this hack. It does not go to the >> profile page of the logged in user but to the first one. This can be >> the >> same -and in this scenario it is- but there is no guarantee for that. > > IMO, trying to access implementation details like sessions from your > acceptance tests is an anti-pattern, to be avoided. > > The puzzle you've hit here is that there is state implied in your > scenarios by the use of the phrase "*my* profile page". I think there > are two approaches this: > > (1) You remove the implicit state from the scenario by re-writing your > step as "When I go to the profile page for the User". This means that > you can safely now use User.first, and you can even assert at the top > of that step that User.count.should == 1, because the step refers to > "the User" - so there must only be one, right? > > (2) You model the state implicit in the scenario within your tests by > writing an instance variable on the Scenario's world when you log in - > something to represent "me". > > There is a third approach where you write a special 'API' on your app > which the tests can use to find out who "me" is. That might be as > simple as conventionally putting it in a HTML comment on the page, or > even displaying it on every page, or as over-engineered as a REST GET > request to a user/current or /session resource. > > However you chose to do it, I would urge you to avoid going under the > covers to grab the session object directly - it's a path to hideous > complexity IMO. Better to keep your test layer as separate as you can > from the code. > > Does that make sense? > > > Matt Wynne > http://blog.mattwynne.net > http://www.songkick.com -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. _______________________________________________ rspec-users mailing list rspec-users@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users
