Question

So I’m writing my app doing feature-first BDD with Rails, Cucumber, RSpec.

My client requested that a total gets calculated as you fill in the fields.

My question is, this is not really a feature, more of a spec. This is related to the feature of creating the invoice, but I don’t think it justifies a whole integration test.

It’s just javascript that’s running.

So my mind is telling me to write a spec for this in the view spec. Is this correct? And is it possible to test these javascript cases in rspec?

Or should I isolate this a step further and go straight for a javascript testing framework?

Answer 1

I’d really recommend you start with integration tests for every feature you plan to add to your app, they’re an invaluable tool for understanding the problem your trying to solve and communicating new additions to the software with clients.

To test JavaScript on your page, you may want to look into Selenium, from memory you can use Selenium as a drop in replacement of Rack::Test when using Capybara to test web pages.

As far as Cucumber goes, I’d suggest making a new feature file for creating the invoice and having a scenario that tests that the correct total total gets calculated when you enter a certain string into a field. Something like:

Scenario: Filling out the form

  Given I am looking at the invoice form
  When I fill in the fields with <value1> and <value2> without submitting
  Then I should see <total> on the page

Obviously I don’t know enough about your form to know what fields need to be filled out, but that’s a general outline of how I’d test it. I’d also make a test in the view spec to ensure that there is a section for the calculated total value in the form.

After that, I’d drop down to writing specs for the Javascript in Jasmine and implement the code to calculate and display the total.