OnRails.org

I’ve been loving Rails BDD with Cucumber for the past year or so — it helps me focus on the next required step to build a feature in my application, and better focus equals better development velocity. However, one thing I found tedious in starting with Cucumber was defining route matchers in paths.rb.

The stock path_to method is implemented as a case statement, allowing you to add a case for each path you want to recognize. This works, but leaves you feeling a bit un-DRY since you’re basically duplicating information in your routes.rb file.

Here’s a quick hack to paths.rb that lets you leverage your existing routes:

change

    else
      raise "Can't find mapping from \"#{page_name}\" to a path.\n" +
        "Now, go and add a mapping in #{__FILE__}"
    end

to

    else
      begin
        page_name =~ /the (.*) page/
        path_components = $1.split(/\s+/)
        self.send(path_components.push('path').join('_').to_sym)
      rescue Object => e
        raise "Can't find mapping from \"#{page_name}\" to a path.\n" +
          "Now, go and add a mapping in #{__FILE__}"
      end
    end

In your Cucumber steps, you can now use any named route that does not require a parameter. For example, users_path would become “the users page”, and new_product_path would become “the new product page”. As you add new resources, at least the index and new options should work out of the box — no further edits to paths.rb required!

UPDATE:

w00t!

This is now baked into cucumber-rails!