Question

My sinatra application has a security method which runs at the start of some routes. I want to run the same set of authentication rspec tests against each of the routes which I need to be secure, but I don’t want to repeat myself in rspec. How should I do this?

helpers do
  def requires_auth!
    # stuff
  end
end

post '/object' do
  requires_auth!

  # stuff
end

put '/object' do
  requires_auth!

  # stuff
end

get '/object' do
  # doesn't require auth

  # stuff
end

My spec currently looks like this, and looks very repetitive.

describe 'The post request' do
  it 'should fail if auth token is invalid'
  it 'should fail if auth token has expired'

  it 'should pass if <other stuff>'
end

describe 'The put request' do
  it 'should fail if auth token is invalid'
  it 'should fail if auth token has expired'

  it 'should pass if <more other stuff>'
end

describe 'The get request' do
  it 'should pass if <other stuff yet again>'
end

Answer 1

I should have RTFM! Looks like this is exactly what shared_examples is used for. If you think there’s a better way that’s specific to Sinatra do post away though!