rspec users - Oct 2007 - Using Mechanize in Story Step Implementations

Hi,

Thought this might be of interest story writers.
The mechanize plugin seems to play nice with RSpec.
The following mix of methods seems to work just fine.
I especially like the helpers for populating forms.

agent = WWW::Mechanize.new
page = agent.get ''http://www.gmail.com''
page.should have_tag(''form'', :count => 1)
form = page.forms.first
form.email = ''d at d.com''
page = agent.submit form

Could make for some nice step implementations.
Almost seems too easy, is there anything that mechanize will break?

- Andy
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On 10/24/07, Andy Watts <andywatts at yahoo.com>
wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Thought this might be of interest story writers.
> The mechanize plugin seems to play nice with RSpec.
> The following mix of methods seems to work just fine.
> I especially like the helpers for populating forms.
>
> agent = WWW::Mechanize.new
> page = agent.get ''http://www.gmail.com''
> page.should have_tag(''form'', :count => 1)
> form = page.forms.first
> form.email = ''d at d.com''
> page = agent.submit form
>
> Could make for some nice step implementations.
> Almost seems too easy, is there anything that mechanize will break?
Can''t see why this wouldn''t work, and it might be useful for
setting
up more complex interactions, but for this simple case why not just do
something like:

post ''/form_action'', {:email => ''d at
d.com''}

Cheers,
James

On 10/24/07, James Hughes <hughes.james at gmail.com>
wrote:
> On 10/24/07, Andy Watts <andywatts at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > Thought this might be of interest story writers.
> > The mechanize plugin seems to play nice with RSpec.
> > The following mix of methods seems to work just fine.
> > I especially like the helpers for populating forms.
> >
> > agent = WWW::Mechanize.new
> > page = agent.get ''http://www.gmail.com''
> > page.should have_tag(''form'', :count => 1)
> > form = page.forms.first
> > form.email = ''d at d.com''
> > page = agent.submit form
> >
> > Could make for some nice step implementations.
> > Almost seems too easy, is there anything that mechanize will break?
>
> Can''t see why this wouldn''t work, and it might be useful
for setting
> up more complex interactions, but for this simple case why not just do
> something like:
>
> post ''/form_action'', {:email => ''d at
d.com''}
Because even if the form has no email field, as long as the model
supports it, your example will pass. Andy''s example specifies that
there should be an email field in the form, in addition to specifying
that the model should be able to handle it.

Cheers,
David

On 10/24/2007 4:42 PM, James Hughes wrote:
> On 10/24/07, Andy Watts <andywatts at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Thought this might be of interest story writers.
>> The mechanize plugin seems to play nice with RSpec.
>> The following mix of methods seems to work just fine.
>> I especially like the helpers for populating forms.
>>
>> agent = WWW::Mechanize.new
>> page = agent.get ''http://www.gmail.com''
>> page.should have_tag(''form'', :count => 1)
>> form = page.forms.first
>> form.email = ''d at d.com''
>> page = agent.submit form
>>
>> Could make for some nice step implementations.
>> Almost seems too easy, is there anything that mechanize will break?
> 
> Can''t see why this wouldn''t work, and it might be useful
for setting
> up more complex interactions, but for this simple case why not just do
> something like:
> 
> post ''/form_action'', {:email => ''d at
d.com''}
Well, one advantage is that the former tests three things: 1. that the 
get works, 2. that the get and post share the "email" field, and 3.
that
the post works.

I had a recent bug where I actually broke the "get" completely 
(crashed), and I''m sure we''ve all seen bugs where we change a
field name
in one case but not the other, so it''s good to test all three.

I hadn''t thought of using Mechanize, though - there''s a
form_test_helper
plugin that does the same thing without the HTTP, and I''ve been meaning
to try getting it working on RSpec.

Jay Levitt