Question

I’m sure this is basic as I’m a new Rails user and want to do Cucumber right. I spent the weekend reading the Pragmatic book and have a small project I want to create and use it. I intentionally set up my first feature as broadly as possible so that it wouldn’t be brittle depending too much on how it works on the rails side. I created a new rails app using DanielKehoe’s starter on github. I think I got the user figured out. But when I attempt to use Cucumber to creating my first table of Reference Units which would be a table of constants, I expected that cucumber would drive me to create a Reference Units model but I spent all morning trying to get it to do so using the book, Railscasts and stackoverflow to push me to where I’m at now. I went ahead and generated a model for Reference Units, controller with a new action and an empty view. But it now cannot figure out that I have Reference Unit model with a (LoadError). Odd because it’s there in the app.

Here’s my current feature:

Feature: I want to have Reference Units that I can refer to so they can be used elsewhere. That way 
they can be updated in one place. I want to create and edit these Units.

Background:
Given I am logged in as the following user:
| name | "Testy McUserton" |
| password | "please" |
| email | "[e-mail]" |

Scenario: Adding Reference Units
When I go to the new Reference Units page
And I fill in the following:
| commodity | "corn" |
| language | "en" |
| wholesale unit | "xton" |
| retail unit | "xliter" |
| receipt unit | "dollar" |
Then it should create a new Reference Unit

here is my step definition:

Given /^I am logged in as the following user:$/ do |table|
  sign_up valid_user
end

When /^I go to the new Reference Units page$/ do 
  visit new_reference_unit_path
end

When /^I fill in the following:$/ do |table|
    @reference_unit = Reference_unit.create!(table.rows_hash)
end

Then /^it should create a new Reference Unit$/ do
  pending # express the regexp above with the code you wish you had
end

new_reference_unit_path is in my feature/support/paths.rb as:

when /the new Reference Units page/
  '/reference_units/new'

Running this in 3.1.3 the following is in red:

Scenario: Adding Reference Units              # features/user_can_create_units.feature:10
When I go to the new Reference Units page   # features/step_definitions/user_create_unit_reference.rb:6
  Expected /Users/sam/apps/keriakoo/app/models/reference_unit.rb to define Reference_unit (LoadError)
  ./app/controllers/reference_units_controller.rb:4:in `new'
  ./features/step_definitions/user_create_unit_reference.rb:7:in `/^I go to the new Reference Units page$/'
  features/user_can_create_units.feature:11:in `When I go to the new Reference Units page'

As I mentioned above. the reference_unit.rb file is in the correct place. Of course, I haven’t added any methods or attributes to it expecting cucumber to guide me at the right time. I’m sure it’s something simple, but I tried all kinds of combinations of words and capitalization to shake something loose, sam

Answer 1

OK, I think I hit on the clue. Digging around, I used the –backtrace option on cucumber and it pointed me to a dependency with a key word of “const”. OK, it doesn’t like something in the text. Looking around for info on two-word models, I can tell that my model was correct: ReferenceUnit. But looking at my error output, it was looking for Reference_unit. So for laughs I altered the regex for that step to be “When /^I go to the new Reference units page$” the error went away. So the syntax of the first line is important, and not ‘freestylin’ as I suspected.