rspec users - Apr 2010 - Cucumber + capybara: checking list items

I''m unsure how to check a few things related to lists of items. In this
specific case, I have a articles with title and abstract. When there are 
no articles, I''d like to ensure that there *is* a list on the page, but
that it does not contain any articles. When there are articles, they 
should be displayed in such a way that their attributes are not mixed.

For the empty list check I''ve come up with this, however, I noticed
that
the capybara README advises against "x.should_not have_y". Is there a 
better way?

Then /^I should see an empty article list$/ do
  with_scope("#articles") do
    page.should_not have_css("li")
  end
end

For checking existing articles like this

<ul id="articles">
  <li>
    <span class="title">Article 1</span>
    <span class="abstract">foo bar</span>
  </li>
  <li>
    ...
  </li>
</ul>


I have this broken step

Then /^I should see an article with title "([^\"]*)" and abstract
"([^\"]*)"$/ do |title, abstract|
  with_scope(''#articles li'') do
    with_scope(''.title'')    { page.should have_content(title) 
}
    with_scope(''.abstract'') { page.should
have_content(abstract) }
  end
end

It is broken in that it does not ensure that corresponding titles and 
abstracts are within the same LI. I understand why it doesn''t work, for
with_scope just builds up a scope chain. Unfortunately, I don''t see how
to get the check I want.


Michael

-- 
Michael Schuerig
mailto:michael at schuerig.de
http://www.schuerig.de/michael/