We are actively debating this very topic :) For most stuff, we create data through the UI.
We have a "Before" block that prunes the database back to a known state before each scenario, using the ruby 'sequel' library. It's pretty fast, but it does mean we have to be careful in our selenium, that we wait for the database as seen by the app to catch up with the database session committed by the ruby code. And then our scenarios have stuff like "Given a top-level node called "Foo" exists" - which creates the node via selenium. However there are some areas where this is just too slow, and we have created some 'Given' steps that use ruby-sequel code that build up data directly in the database. This does mean duplicating some of our Java domain in the ruby code, but it seemed to be a pragmatic solution to the problem. Currently we are debating whether to make more 'Given' steps directly push data into the database - there are pros and cons either way; using the UI gives us more confidence in our app (and less fragility if our domain changes) and requires less code (we can reuse 'when' steps from some scenarios as 'given' steps for others) but it's slower - and the accumulated effect of slow builds can be terrible. - Korny On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 9:32 AM, Ben Mabey <b...@benmabey.com> wrote: > Korny Sietsma wrote: >> >> True, but cucumber is useful for lots of different kinds of projects. >> I'm currently using it to build a java webapp, so I don't need much >> beyond cucumber, selenium, and selenium-client. >> > > I'm curious, with your current setup do you insert data directly into your > database (i.e. in Given steps) or do you always use the selenium to enter in > data. Meaning, if you needed a user to exist so you could have them log > in.. do you use ActiveRecord, or something similar, to create the user or do > you use the webforms to create the user? Also, how do you handle cleaning > the database after each scenario? Sorry, for the questions, but I'm curious > how you've solved these problems when using Cucumber to test a non-ruby > webapp. > > Thanks, > Ben > > >> But agreed, if I was in rails-land (sigh) then I'd want webrat and >> rspec-rails. >> >> - Korny >> p.s. I'm aware webrat works without rails, but when I looked it didn't >> seem a big boost for our kind of app. >> >> On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 10:42 PM, Chris Flipse <cfli...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> >>> On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 7:42 AM, Korny Sietsma <ko...@sietsma.com> wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> Presumably you only need these if you are *building* cucumber? >>>> >>>> If you just want to use cucumber, it should be as simple as "gem >>>> install cucumber", and it should get all the other dependencies. On >>>> my machine it seemed to install treetop, polyglot, and presumably a >>>> few others - but I don't have rspec-rails nor webrat. >>>> >>> >>> rspec(-rails) and webrat aren't actually *required* by Cucumber -- you >>> can >>> use it without them, which is why they're not force-installed. However, >>> nearly every example you're going to find of Cucumber run against a rails >>> app is going to be using webrat and rspec-rails ... >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> // anything worth taking seriously is worth making fun of >>> // http://blog.devcaffeine.com/ >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> rspec-users mailing list >>> rspec-users@rubyforge.org >>> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users >>> >>> >> >> >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > rspec-users mailing list > rspec-users@rubyforge.org > http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users > -- Kornelis Sietsma korny at my surname dot com "Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of" _______________________________________________ rspec-users mailing list rspec-users@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users
