Suppose we have this class: class MarbleMachine def insert color # process marble of color 'color' end
def press button # process a push of the given button end def output # compute a result end end Let's presume here that the machine takes any number of marbles in any of 8 different colors, and that it has a few different buttons that can be pressed. The output is highly dependent on what actions you take, in what order. Obviously, a bit of a silly example, but easier than explaining a complex, highly data-driven application. Ok, now let's think about writing some specs. We're really not interested in trying to specify every possible scenario. But there are a few scenarios that we know are important. For example, we know that the customer is very interested in what happens in the state the machine is in after the sequence: [:blue_marble, :medium_button, :black_marble, :orange_marble] What happens if you insert two green marbles after this? What happens if you insert a yellow marble and press the big purple button? etc. In addition, the customer is also very interested in what happens if you push the red button when the machine is in a variety of states. What I'm trying to get at, here, is that I want to share some complex contexts across specs while not varying the action I'm specifying. I also want to vary the action I'm specifying in a number of different contexts (which is more along the lines of shared examples). I don't really want to think about it in terms of the state that exists, because that's not useful from the customer's standpoint. To be sure that things are set up correctly, we need to be able to say what happened, not just what the state is. So, how would you organize your specs in a scenario like this?
_______________________________________________ rspec-users mailing list rspec-users@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users