# For tests

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/for-tests/195442>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [September 23, 2010, 10:40am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/for-tests/195442 "2010-09-23T10:40:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![msan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/3ab097/32.png) [@msan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/msan)\
**Post date:** [September 23, 2010, 10:40am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/for-tests/195442/1 "2010-09-23T10:40:43Z")

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Hello.  
I’ve seen  
[http://teachmetocode.com/screencasts/rails-3-building-a-blog-part-1-test-setup-generators/](http://teachmetocode.com/screencasts/rails-3-building-a-blog-part-1-test-setup-generators/).  
He use cucumber with rspec and capybara for tests.  
What do you think?  
I’m reading about cucumber but I don’t know anything about capybara.

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**Author:** ![msan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/3ab097/32.png) [@msan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/msan)\
**Post date:** [September 23, 2010, 11:33am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/for-tests/195442/2 "2010-09-23T11:33:24Z")

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Capybara aims to simplify the process of integration testing Rack  
applications, such as Rails, Sinatra or Merb. It is agnostic about the  
driver running your tests and currently comes bundled with rack-test,  
Culerity, Celerity and Selenium support built in. env.js support is  
available as the capybara-envjs gem.

_Capybara is built to work nicely with Cucumber. Its API is very similar  
to  
that of Webrat. It is inspired by and aims to replace Webrat as a DSL  
for  
interacting with a webapplication._

Check more here: [GitHub - teamcapybara/capybara: Acceptance test framework for web applications](http://github.com/jnicklas/capybara)

* * *

Edmond  
Software Developer | Baobab Health Trust ([http://www.baobabhealth.org/](http://www.baobabhealth.org/))  
|  
Malawi

Cell: +265 999 465 137 | +265 881 234 717

_“Many people doubt open source software and probably don’t realize that  
there is an alternative… which is just as good…” – Kevin Scannell_

2010/9/23 Mauro [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![msan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/3ab097/32.png) [@msan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/msan)\
**Post date:** [September 23, 2010, 11:41am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/for-tests/195442/3 "2010-09-23T11:41:01Z")

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Do you advise me to use cucumber for test?

On 23 September 2010 11:32, Edmond K.

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**Author:** ![msan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/3ab097/32.png) [@msan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/msan)\
**Post date:** [September 23, 2010, 1:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/for-tests/195442/4 "2010-09-23T13:23:29Z")

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2010/9/23 Mauro [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)

> Do you advise me to use cucumber for test?

Cucumber is designed for Behaviour Driven Development (BDD). Some also  
propagate that BDD is the future of software engineering. If you are  
goal is  
BDD, then Cucumber is the answer. I use Cucumber myself.

But you should know that there are levels of testing. Cucumber is for  
high  
level testing. You also need to look at other testing tools for low  
level.  
Rspec, Unit Testing and Shoulda are good examples.

* * *

Edmond  
Software Developer | Baobab Health Trust ([http://www.baobabhealth.org/](http://www.baobabhealth.org/))  
|  
Malawi

Cell: +265 999 465 137 | +265 881 234 717

_“Many people doubt open source software and probably don’t realize that  
there is an alternative… which is just as good…” – Kevin Scannell_

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![msan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/3ab097/32.png) [@msan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/msan)\
**Post date:** [September 23, 2010, 4:32pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/for-tests/195442/5 "2010-09-23T16:32:57Z")

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Msan M. wrote:

> Do you advise me to use cucumber for test?

Absolutely, for user-facing behavior (equivalent to functional and  
integration tests). For unit and similar tests, just use RSpec.

## Best,

Marnen Laibow-Koser  
[http://www.marnen.org](http://www.marnen.org)  
removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid