[rspec-users] Cucumber, more examples, tabular data input sets

[Ben Mabey]

Zach Dennis wrote:
> Writing feature inputs in the tabular format has recently been very
> helpful. However, there are some things that seem kind of funny when
> writing. For example, let's say we wanted to ensure that certain
> requests resulted in the access denied page:
>
>   Given Joe is a staff member without the 'admin' privilege
>   When I GET /admin as Joe
>   Then I am notified that access was denied
>
> The possible variables here based on step implementations are:
>
>   Given XXXX is a staff member without the 'XXXX' privilege
>   When I XXX XXXX as XXXX
>   Then I am notified that access was denied
>
> This requires the More Examples to look like:
>
>   | name | privilege | request_method | path        | name |
>   | Joe  | admin     | POST           | /invoices   | Joe  |
>   | Joe  | admin     | PUT            | /invoices/1 | Joe  |
>   etc...
>
> This isn't that bad, but it'd be nice if we could specify only the
> variable inputs that we care about -- the privilege, the request
> method and the path. As the scenario involves more steps you have to
> grow your tabular data, unless I am missing how to do something (which
> could be the case).
>
> It also seems somewhat odd that the first example is the scenario
> itself. It almost seems like the scenario should define the
> placeholders and the More Examples section should define all the input
> data sets. For example:
>
>   Given Joe is a staff member without the '$privilege$' privilege
>   When I $request$ $path$ as Joe
>   Then I am notified that access was denied
>
>   Examples:
>   | privilege | request_method | path        |
>   | admin     | GET            | /admin      |
>   | admin     | POST           | /invoices   |
>   | admin     | PUT            | /invoices/1 |
>
> It would somewhat rely on using the \$\w+\$ pattern to denote what
> should be replaced by the Examples input data set. I'm not tied to how
> the inputs are grabbed, but it seems like moving in this direction
> allows the tabular inputs to be more streamlined to what you wanted to
> include in a scenario.
>
> WDYT?
>
>   

Why is name even being used?  Since you are talking in first person in 
the other steps couldn't you remove the name altogether:

Given I'm a staff member without the 'admin' privilege
When I GET /admin
Then I am notified that access was denied


As far as your suggestion about using placeholders instead of a real example set- I like it.  This was actually brought up a little while ago by Evan Light on this list so I think it is something that people naturally move towards.  I think this way would be clearer to non-developers as well since the column names would appear in the actual scenario.

-Ben