Scenario

Scenario provides a simple way to move common setup and helper methods into cohesive "scenarios" that are easy to include in your specs. The advantage of a scenario over regular mixin modules is that you can use RSpec hooks (eg. before :each {}) to do the setup instead of having redundant, copy-pasted setup code littering your specs.

Scenario also includes a basic DSL for performing setup atomically. That is, instead of doing expensive setup in a before :all block that is always run regardless of which pieces you need, you can run only the setup that you need in a given describe with the Scenario DSL.

Examples

# Describe your scenarios:

describe_scenario :user do
  before :all do
    @user = User.create( :name => "Bob", :password => "foo", :admin => false )
  end
  
  def login
    visit( url( :login ) )
    fill_in :name, :with => "Bob"
    fill_in :password, :with => "foo"
    click_button "Login"
    response
  end
end

describe_scenario :admin do
  before :all do
    @user = User.create( :name => "Sally", :password => "bar", :admin => true )
  end
  
  def login
    visit( url( :login ) )
    fill_in :name, :with => "Sally"
    fill_in :password, :with => "bar"
    click_button "Login"
    response
  end
end

# Write your specs:

describe "Logging in" do
  describe "as an user" do
    scenario :user
    
    it "should log them in" do
      login.should be_successful
    end
  end
  
  describe "as an admin" do
    scenario :admin
    
    it "should log them in" do
      login.should be_successful
    end
  end
end

Because scenarios are simply blocks that are run in the context where they are included, you can use as many as you want:

describe "GET /message/new when database is down" do
  scenario :user
  scenario :database_down
  
  it "should show fail whale" do
    visit( "/message/new" )
    response.should contain( "fail whale" )
  end
end

And you can nest them:

describe "GET /message/new" do
  scenario :user
  
  describe "when database is up" do
    it "should not show fail whale" do
      visit( "/message/new" )
      response.should_not contain( "fail whale" )
    end
  end
  
  describe "when database is down" do
    scenario :database_down
    
    it "should show fail whale" do
      visit( "/message/new" )
      response.should contain( "fail whale" )
    end
  end
end

Setup

Setup is executed before :all.

describe_scenario :user do
  setup_for :user do |name, password|
    name ||= "Bob"
    password ||= "foo"
    @user = User.create( :name => name, :password => password )
  end
  
  setup_for :admin do |name, password|
    name ||= "Sally"
    password ||= "bar"
    @user = User.create( :name => name, :password => password, :admin => true )
  end
  
  def login
    visit( url( :login ) )
    fill_in :name, :with => "Bob"
    fill_in :password, :with => "foo"
    click_button "Login"
    response
  end
end

# Pass a hash:

describe "One user" do
  scenario :user, :setup => :user
  
  it "has one user" do
    User.count.should == 1
  end
end

describe "Two users" do
  scenario :user, :setup => [:user, :admin]
  
  it "has two users" do
    User.count.should == 2
  end
end

# Or pass a block:

describe "One user" do
  scenario :user do
    setup_user( "Sam" )
  end
  
  it "has one user" do
    User.count.should == 1
  end
end

# Or both!

describe "Two users" do
  scenario :user, :setup => :user do
    setup_admin( "Steph" )
  end
  
  it "has two users" do
    User.count.should == 2
  end
end

Fixtures

Basic fixture support is also included. (Please note that fixtures are currently hard-coded to spec/scenarios/fixtures. It will be configurable in a future version. Feel free to open a pull request or just monkey patch the root() method on Scenario::Fixtures.

Scenario::Fixtures['html/sample.html'] # Returns contents of the fixture as a string

Scenario::Fixtures caches the contents of the file so that the file only needs to be read once.

Version History

0.3.2 - Explicitly require RSpec.
0.3.1 - Add "setup" syntax.
0.3.0 - Remove support for module-based scenarios, allow calling RSpec hooks in scenarios.
0.2.0 - Add support for RSpec 1.3+
0.1.0 - Initial release with support for RSpec 2.x

Contributing to Scenario

Check out the latest master to make sure the feature hasn't been implemented or the bug hasn't been fixed yet
Check out the issue tracker to make sure someone already hasn't requested it and/or contributed it
Fork the project
Start a feature/bugfix branch
Commit and push until you are happy with your contribution
Make sure to add tests for it. This is important so I don't break it in a future version unintentionally.
Please try not to mess with the Rakefile, version, or history. If you want to have your own version, or is otherwise necessary, that is fine, but please isolate to its own commit so I can cherry-pick around it.

scenario

Development