[rspec-users] Working outside-in with Cucumber and RSpec

[David Chelimsky]

Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 26, 2008, at 5:09 PM, Ashley Moran  
<ashley.moran at patchspace.co.uk> wrote:

>
> On Oct 26, 2008, at 9:09 pm, Matt Wynne wrote:
>
>> I don't know. I've got inheritance in my controllers, for example I  
>> have a MediaController which is subclassed by ImagesController and  
>> VideosController. The specs allowed me to factor out this base class.
>>
>> I think controllers are OK for doing BDD:
>>
>> describe "the show action"
>>    describe "when the video is for an artist"
>>        describe "when the video cannot be found"
>>        describe "when the video exists in the database"
>>    describe "when the video is for a concert"
>>
>> etc.
>
> Hmm, what's the code like behind that?  I try to avoid inheritance,  
> or at least rarely feel the need for it.  There are many ways to  
> implement those specs, and one of them involves a lot of ifs and  
> cases.  (A valid if-statement would probably be for "when the video  
> cannot be found"    and "when the video exists in the database".)
>
>
>> TBH, I have only just begun to glimpse the idea that cucumber might  
>> mean I don't need to get 100% coverage from unit-level specs... so  
>> I may just need more time to get my head around the idea.
>
> Me too, especially when multiple content types and authentication  
> schemes come into play... not got that far in my current projects  
> though.
>
>
>> I guess it also depends on the rest of your team: it sounds as  
>> though David can trust the rest of his team to write well designed  
>> code - it's just him! Personally I feel I need to set the rest of  
>> my team a good example while they get through the 'shu' stage. Pat  
>> - are you going solo too?
>
>
> I'm in an unusual situation in this sense.  One of my Merb projects  
> is purely personal, right now.  So for that I just want to make my  
> app work, and the code not to cause me grief.  The other is a two  
> day a week BDD coaching/pair programming development with an  
> otherwise solo developer.  So I have to make the specs damn near  
> perfect, because it's all the RSpec he's seen.  Due to Merb still  
> being a bit of an unknown, that's making me lean towards neurotic  
> perfectionism in my own code, at the moment.
>
> And I know just as soon as I've made them all perfect, David will  
> redefine perfection again

Are you calling me neurotic?