rspec users - Sep 2008 - BDD / cucumber thought - chaining ''Then'' steps with Which

Going back to the debate about keeping state between steps, I found  
myself with the mild urge to be able to write this today:

Given there is a user
And the user has 20 friends
Then I should see a thumbnail of each of the users''s friends
Which should be a link to the user profile page for that friend

NB: An idiom in this which may be songkick-only but was inspired by  
what we''ve read on this list, and worth explaining: "the
user" as in
"the user has 20 friends", means User.first in rails. If
there''s more
than one user when this step runs, it will flunk, because the English  
no longer works.

So anyway, what I was thinking was that it would be nice to be able  
to refer to the last thing I said I should be able to see, and  
decorate it with more specification in a subsequent step or steps.

Obviously, I could roll these into one long Then step, but maybe this  
is more elegant...

Just thinking out loud. I have no idea what the steps code would look  
like.

WDYT?

cheers,
Matt
----
http://blog.mattwynne.net
http://songkick.com

In case you wondered: The opinions expressed in this email are my own  
and do not necessarily reflect the views of any former, current or  
future employers of mine.



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On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 6:30 AM, Matt Wynne <matt at mattwynne.net>
wrote:
> Going back to the debate about keeping state between steps, I found myself
> with the mild urge to be able to write this today:
> Given there is a user
> And the user has 20 friends
> Then I should see a thumbnail of each of the users''s friends
> Which should be a link to the user profile page for that friend
> NB: An idiom in this which may be songkick-only but was inspired by what
> we''ve read on this list, and worth explaining: "the
user" as in "the user
> has 20 friends", means User.first in rails. If there''s more
than one user
> when this step runs, it will flunk, because the English no longer works.
> So anyway, what I was thinking was that it would be nice to be able to
refer
> to the last thing I said I should be able to see, and decorate it with more
> specification in a subsequent step or steps.
> Obviously, I could roll these into one long Then step, but maybe this is
> more elegant...
> Just thinking out loud. I have no idea what the steps code would look like.
> WDYT?
One of the promises of using treetop is the ability to extend the
grammar yourself to include keywords like Which.

As for maintaining state across steps, I know that Aslak recommends
avoiding this on the cucumber wiki, but I can tell you I''ve not once
(as in never ever ever) been bitten by doing this. I''ve got a couple
of helper methods I use to create and retrieve instance variables that
are uniquely named. See http://gist.github.com/13087.

Including that module in env.rb allows me to do this:

Given a user with login "ernie" and password "rubber"
And a user with login "bert" and password "duckie"
And ernie is assigned the admin role
And bert is assigned the contributor role
...

Given /^a user with login "(.*)" and password "(.*)"$/ do
|login, password|
  create_user_named(login, password) do |user|
    set_ivar :user, login, user
  end
end

Given /^(.*) is assigned the (.*) role$/ do |login, role|
  get_ivar :user, login do |user|
    user.add_role(role)
  end
end

... thus creating and retrieving instance variables named user_ernie
and user_bert with different roles.

Other people have experiences, positive or negative, sharing state
across steps with instance variables?
> cheers,
> Matt
> ----
> http://blog.mattwynne.net
> http://songkick.com
> In case you wondered: The opinions expressed in this email are my own and
do
> not necessarily reflect the views of any former, current or future
employers
> of mine.

Stories without shared state feel clunky to me, because we would never speak
that way.

I also had a similar urge, don''t know if it''s a
"programmer" urge:
Given a user
With the name ''josh''
And the password ''sesame''

...so I don''t end up with an explosion of steps for ''a user
with x'', ''a user
with y'', ''a user with x and y'' .

So there are named things, but we also often want to refer to the anonymous
"last mentioned thing" like we do in speech. So I end up doing things
like
this sometimes:

Given /a user/ do
  shared_state["he"] = shared_state["she"] =
shared_state["it"] = User.new
end

...is that bad?

Cheers,

Josh



On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 12:30 PM, Matt Wynne <matt at mattwynne.net>
wrote:
> Going back to the debate about keeping state between steps, I found myself
> with the mild urge to be able to write this today:
> Given there is a user
> And the user has 20 friends
> Then I should see a thumbnail of each of the users''s friends
> Which should be a link to the user profile page for that friend
>
> NB: An idiom in this which may be songkick-only but was inspired by what
> we''ve read on this list, and worth explaining: "the
user" as in "the user
> has 20 friends", means User.first in rails. If there''s more
than one user
> when this step runs, it will flunk, because the English no longer works.
>
> So anyway, what I was thinking was that it would be nice to be able to
> refer to the last thing I said I should be able to see, and decorate it
with
> more specification in a subsequent step or steps.
>
> Obviously, I could roll these into one long Then step, but maybe this is
> more elegant...
>
> Just thinking out loud. I have no idea what the steps code would look
> like.
>
> WDYT?
>
> cheers,
> Matt
> ----
> http://blog.mattwynne.net
> http://songkick.com
>
> In case you wondered: The opinions expressed in this email are my own and
> do not necessarily reflect the views of any former, current or future
> employers of mine.
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> rspec-users mailing list
> rspec-users at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users
>
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On 26 Sep 2008, at 13:33, David Chelimsky wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 6:30 AM, Matt Wynne <matt at mattwynne.net>  
> wrote:
>> Going back to the debate about keeping state between steps, I  
>> found myself
>> with the mild urge to be able to write this today:
>> Given there is a user
>> And the user has 20 friends
>> Then I should see a thumbnail of each of the users''s friends
>> Which should be a link to the user profile page for that friend
>> NB: An idiom in this which may be songkick-only but was inspired  
>> by what
>> we''ve read on this list, and worth explaining: "the
user" as in
>> "the user
>> has 20 friends", means User.first in rails. If there''s
more than
>> one user
>> when this step runs, it will flunk, because the English no longer  
>> works.
>> So anyway, what I was thinking was that it would be nice to be  
>> able to refer
>> to the last thing I said I should be able to see, and decorate it  
>> with more
>> specification in a subsequent step or steps.
>> Obviously, I could roll these into one long Then step, but maybe  
>> this is
>> more elegant...
>> Just thinking out loud. I have no idea what the steps code would  
>> look like.
>> WDYT?
>
> One of the promises of using treetop is the ability to extend the
> grammar yourself to include keywords like Which.
Wow. OK I need to check that out.
> are uniquely named. See http://gist.github.com/13087.
>
> Other people have experiences, positive or negative, sharing state
> across steps with instance variables?
So far, my most remarkable experience is that we had some pretty in- 
depth debates in the office about whether it was a good or bad thing!  
It''s certainly a hot topic.

cheers,
Matt
----
http://blog.mattwynne.net
http://songkick.com

In case you wondered: The opinions expressed in this email are my own  
and do not necessarily reflect the views of any former, current or  
future employers of mine.

On 26 Sep 2008, at 13:59, Josh Chisholm wrote:
> Stories without shared state feel clunky to me, because we would  
> never speak that way.
>
> I also had a similar urge, don''t know if it''s a
"programmer" urge:
>
> Given a user
> With the name ''josh''
> And the password ''sesame''
>
> ...so I don''t end up with an explosion of steps for ''a
user with
> x'', ''a user with y'', ''a user with x and
y'' .
>
> So there are named things, but we also often want to refer to the  
> anonymous "last mentioned thing" like we do in speech. So I end
up
> doing things like this sometimes:
>
> Given /a user/ do
>   shared_state["he"] = shared_state["she"] =
shared_state["it"] =
> User.new
> end
>
> ...is that bad?
FWIW, I think it''s rather nice. We went through a fad of using @it  
for a while, and now we have a stuff[] hash. Both similar ideas -  
there must be something in this.

Aslak, I''d love to hear a war story about how shared state bit you in  
the arse to give this debate some balance.

cheers,
Matt
----
http://blog.mattwynne.net
http://songkick.com

In case you wondered: The opinions expressed in this email are my own  
and do not necessarily reflect the views of any former, current or  
future employers of mine.



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On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 7:59 AM, Matt Wynne <matt at mattwynne.net>
wrote:
>> One of the promises of using treetop is the ability to extend the
>> grammar yourself to include keywords like Which.
>
> Wow. OK I need to check that out.
I don''t know how directly this is supported at this point - when I
said "promises" I meant that in the future sense :)

David

On Sep 26, 2008, at 9:06 AM, Matt Wynne wrote:
> FWIW, I think it''s rather nice. We went through a fad of using @it
> for a while, and now we have a stuff[] hash. Both similar ideas -  
> there must be something in this.
>
I''m doing the same thing. I had @current_project, @current_page etc  
( http://www.mail-archive.com/rspec-users at rubyforge.org/ 
msg06272.html ) but now keep it in a hash @current[:project] etc.

I encountered a problem with things like "When I click the first item  
in the list" or even "When I visit /foos/123", my story doesnt
know
what state its in after that. But then I realized the state is  
embedded in the url !!

This is a RESTful rails app so I wrote a little helper that parses  
the current url to reset my instance variables, which looks something  
like this (mine actually does more, like strips off trailing anchors  
(#foo), assigns variables into @current (?foo=123), and captures  
subdomain.test.com in an :account)

def current_resources( url = nil )
   url ||= response.request.request_uri
   # split resources
   bits = url.split(''/'')
   bits.shift # initial ''/''
   # assign resources
   while !bits.blank?
     @current[ bits.shift.to_sym ] = bits.shift
   end
   @current
end

So after any get, post, visits, clicks etc I call current_resource  
helper


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