Ruby on Rails 3 Testing with Cucumber

Cucumber is used for Behaviour Driven Development.

Cucumber lets software development teams describe how software should behave in plain text. The text is written in a business-readable domain-specific language and serves as documentation, automated tests and development-aid - all rolled into one format.
Cucumber works with Ruby, Java, .NET, Flex or web applications written in any language. It has been translated to over 40 spoken languages.

Install cucumber for Rails 3:

Install Cucumber, Rspec-rails and capybara gem

sudo gem install cucumber-rails
sudo gem install database_cleaner
sudo gem install rspec-rails
sudo gem install capybara

• Cucumber is a behavior driven development (BDD) framework in particular good for integration and functional tests
• RSpec is a behavior driven development (BDD) framework for low level testing in the Ruby language
• database_cleaner performs DB cleanup in testing
• capybara simulating a browser, automating a browser or setting expectations using the matchers.
  

Using Cucumber to test rails 3 application:

• Create a new Rails application store
  

$rails new store -d mysql

• Edit the Gemfile
  

Include the Cucumber gems in a Rails 3 application

 group :test, :development do
    gem 'rspec-rails'
    gem 'cucumber-rails'
     gem 'capybara'
     gem 'database_cleaner'
 end

• bundle install

• Install the cucumber skeleton files to a Rails 3 application.
  

$ rails generate cucumber:install 

The cucumber-rails generator creates the directories:

features/step_definitions

features/support

The cucumber-rails generator creates the files:

config/cucumber.yml

features/support/env.rb

lib/tasks/cucumber.rake

script/cucumber

• rake db:create

• rake db:migrate

• Run the Cucumber features
  

$rake cucumber



Create cucumber features:

• Create a Cucumber Feature for Rails 3 application testing
  

$vi features/manage_store.feature

• Cucumber Feature is the business user testing specification written in plain English with a specific format
  

Feature Format

 Feature: ...
   In order ...
    Some Actor ...
   Should ...
 
   Scenarior: ...
      Given ...
      And ...

     When ...
     AND ...
 
     Then ...
     AND ...

Implement the testing steps and Rails model code for Cucumber on Rails :

• Create Cucumber step definitions
  

$vi features/step_definitions/order_steps.rb

• Cucumber uses regular expression to match string and pass it to the step definitions
  
• Run Cucumber
  

$rake cucumber

An example might be the ability to manage companies:

Feature: Manage companies

 In order to keep track of companies
 
 A user

  Should be able to manage companies


Scenario: Create a new company

 Given I am logged in

 When I create a new company named Acme

 Then I should see that a company named Acme exists



features/

companies.feature

steps/

company_steps.rb



Given == Setup

Given "I am logged in" do

user = Factory(:user)

visits new_session_path

fills_in ‘Login’,

:with => user.login

fills_in ‘Password’, :with => user.password

clicks_button ‘Login’

end



Given "I am logged in" do

user = Factory(:user)

visits new_session_path

fills_in 'Login',

:with => user.login

fills_in 'Password', :with => user.password

clicks_button 'Login'

end



When == Change

When "I create a new company named $name" do |name|

visits new_company_path

fills_in 'Name', :with => name

clicks_button 'Create'

end


Then == Outcome

Then "I should see that a company named $name exists" do |name|

response.body.should =~ Regexp.new(name)

end



At every step you need to run cucumber and check for the result.