How do i remove duplication from my steps in story runner?

Testing RSpec
1

OK, I’m probably being incredibly dense here

I have some steps defined something like this (extremely contrived)
example

steps_for(:foo) do

#snip Given and When steps

Then(“two nested divs and a image will be displayed”) do
response.should have_tag(“div”) do
with_tag(“div”)
end
response.should have_tag(“img”)
end

Then(“two nested divs and a table will be displayed”) do
response.should have_tag(“div”) do
with_tag(“div”)
end
response.should have_tag(“table”)
end
end

with_steps_for :foo do
run ‘stories/foo_story’, :type => RailsStory
end

Now, I’d like to remove the duplication in there by extracting out a
‘two_nested_divs_should_be_displayed’ method so that my steps can read
more like

steps_for(:foo) do

#snip Given and When steps

Then(“two nested divs and a image will be displayed”) do
two_nested_divs_should_be_displayed
response.should have_tag(“img”)
end

Then(“two nested divs and a table will be displayed”) do
two_nested_divs_should_be_displayed
response.should have_tag(“table”)
end
end

with_steps_for :foo do
run ‘stories/foo_story’, :type => RailsStory
end

but the ruby magic going on is proving hard for me to untangle and I
can’t for the life of me get it to work. I either get method_missing
looking for my method, or the method complains that ‘with_tag’ is
undefined.

any ideas?

2

On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 9:36 AM, Perryn F. [email protected]
wrote:

  response.should have_tag("div") do

end

but the ruby magic going on is proving hard for me to untangle and I
can’t for the life of me get it to work. I either get method_missing
looking for my method, or the method complains that ‘with_tag’ is
undefined.

any ideas?

Another attack.

Then(“two nested divs and an? $type will be displayed”) do | type |
response.should have_tag(“div”) do
with_tag(“div”)
end
response.should have_tag(type == ‘image’ ? ‘img’ : type)
end

–
Rick DeNatale

My blog on Ruby
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/

3

Another attack.

Then(“two nested divs and an? $type will be displayed”) do | type |

 response.should have_tag("div") do
       with_tag("div")
 end
 response.should have_tag(type == 'image' ? 'img' : type)

end

Thanks for the cool idea Rick, but unfortunately that only helps with
my contrived little example -
for my real app I really do need to be able to factor out some helper
methods…

4

You should be able to make your own module of helpers and include it
into
Spec::Story::World
module Spec::Story::World
def your_helper_method
# i should have access to everything I need
end
end

Zach

5

Hi Perryn,
maybe you’ll find this interesting:

http://www.workunitgroup.com/2008/4/23/crafting-rspec-steps-with-
step_eval-and-drying-them-with-a-helper

The DRYing thing begins at the middle of the second part of this
series.

matthias

6

You should be able to make your own module of helpers and include it into
Spec::Story::World

module Spec::Story::World
def your_helper_method
# i should have access to everything I need
end
end

brilliant, worked like a charm thanks :slight_smile:

If you will indulge a ruby newb question for a moment - how could I
have worked this out for myself?