Hi,
On 27 Apr 2011, at 20:55, Sergio Ruiz wrote:
> i am setting up a few objects that are interrelated for use in an rspec
> test..
>
> something like:
>
> describe Dimension do
>
> before(:each) do
> text = "string here"
This defines a local variable 'text' which lives for the duration of the before
block. It can't be seen by the #it block (example) below, because it's gone out
of scope.
> end
>
> it "should puts string" do
> puts text
> end
>
> end
>
> when i run this, i get an error: undefined local variable or method
> `text'
>
> am doing something wrong?
>
> thanks!
What people don't realise is that #describe just creates an instance of a
class, called ExampleGroup. Think of the 'before' block and the 'it' blocks as
methods on that class. If you defined a private variable in one method on a
class, you wouldn't expect to be able to see it from another one, would you?
Here's what we used to do in this kind of situation:
describe Dimension do
before(:each) do
@text = "string here"
end
it "should puts string" do
puts @text
end
end
Because, as I expect you know, instance variables *can* be seen between methods
on a class. However, some people found the instance variables noisy, or wanted
to lazy initialise them, so started doing this:
describe Dimension do
def text
@text ||= "string here"
end
it "should puts string" do
puts text
end
end
As I said, #describe just creates a class, so you can define methods on that
class if you like. Now our puts statement is calling the #text method that
we've defined.
This is such a common pattern, that in RSpec 2, David introduced #let blocks,
which let you refactor the above code to look like this:
describe Dimension do
let(:text) { "string here" }
it "should puts string" do
puts text
end
end
Make sense?
cheers,
Matt
--
Freelance programmer & coach
Founder, http://relishapp.com
+44(0)7974430184 | http://twitter.com/mattwynne
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