David Chelimsky: Plain Text Stories on Rails

Plain Text Stories on Rails

David — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:44:00 -0400

Since my last post on plain text stories, there have already been a few improvements, not the least of which is that it will now work with Rails. Again, this is trunk (rev 2769+) only and experimental.

Here’s a working example from an app that I’m working on:

stories/login

Story: registered user logs in
  As a registered user
  I want to have to log in
  So that only other registered users can see my data

  Scenario: user logs in and sees welcome page
    Given a user registered with login: foo and password: test
    When user logs in with login: foo and password: test
    Then user should see the welcome page

  Scenario: user logs in with wrong password
    Given a user registered with login: foo and password: test
    When user logs in with login: foo and password: wrong
    Then user should see the login form
    And page should include text: There was an error logging in.

  Scenario: user logs in with wrong login name
    Given a user registered with login: foo and password: test
    When user logs in with login: wrong and password: test
    Then user should see the login form
    And page should include text: There was an error logging in.

[Update: modified to use runner.steps instead of runner.step_matchers]

stories/login.rb

require File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), *%w[helper])

run_story :type => RailsStory do |runner|
  runner.steps << LoginSteps.new
  runner.steps << NavigationSteps.new
  runner.load File.expand_path(__FILE__).gsub(".rb","")
end

Here’s what’s new in this example:

run_story is added to the main object so you don’t have to remember that silly path to the PlainTextStoryRunner which will undoutedbly change!
run_story accepts arguments, including an options hash, which it will pass to the constructor of the PlainTextStoryRunner (in this case, :type => RailsStory)
run_story yields the runner, which now supports a load method which you use to tell it where to find the plain text story file.
run_story … runs the story

Keep your eyes peeled for more updates in the coming days.

"Plain Text Stories on Rails" by Hussein Morsy

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 10:31:15 -0400

Realy awesome work !!!.

Does the new plain text story funktion in trunk support other languanges than english ?

"Plain Text Stories on Rails" by Aslak HellesÃ¸y

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 04:25:40 -0400

The story continues: In-browser editor for RSpec stories

"Plain Text Stories on Rails" by David Chelimsky

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 13:31:00 -0400

Pat – good point.

"Plain Text Stories on Rails" by Pat Maddox

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 13:17:10 -0400

hrm…in the case of AdminStepMatchers, I would think you should require login_step_matchers.rb (or whatever) inside the file that defines AdminStepMatchers

"Plain Text Stories on Rails" by David Chelimsky

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 10:06:45 -0400

Andy: That’s a good suggestion, but it presents a couple of problems.

For one, it imposes a convention of calling the subdirectory steps (really, they are step_matchers) and assuming that it is flat. I’m using step_matchers and I’m already playing w/ directory hierarchies below that.

So we definitely wouldn’t want to do this until a convention emerges definitively.

Even then, there’s another, more substantial problem: because you can create hierarchies of StepMatchers (which I’ve been doing with some success – admittedly only for a day, but success none-the-less), load order is meaningful. As soon as AdminStepMatchers extends LoginStepMatchers, we need to ensure that LoginStepMatchers loads first.

"Plain Text Stories on Rails" by Andy Watts

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 08:47:10 -0400

Thanks again David. Works great!

Minor gotcha. For requiring the step libraries, I added the following to my stories/helper.rb

Dir[File.join(File.dirname(FILE), “steps/*.rb”)].each do |file| require file end

Should ‘ruby script/generate rspec’ do this?

"Plain Text Stories on Rails" by Pat Maddox

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 01:59:57 -0400

David will you adopt me?