Cucumber Don't Do Affordances

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Before moving onto the next Cucumber scenario, I take a moment to see if the previous scenario missed anything. I think it likely covered just about all of the necessary behavior needed. But the legacy Rails site (and the previous incarnation as an XML-based CMS) built up many affordances that I would prefer not to lose in translation.

The homepage in Webrat save_and_open_page form:



The homepage on the legacy Rails site:



Naked CSS and missing images aside, it looks as though I am missing:

• The date of the meals


• A "Read more..." link for the meal


• Only linking to new recipes, not the entire menu


• Meals on odd numbered days have right-aligned thumbnails (added "depth")


• Text links to older meals at the bottom of the meals section

Working through that list one at a time, first up is this RSpec example:

  it "should include a pretty date for each meal" do
    render("/views/index.haml")
    response.should have_selector(".meals", :content => "May 15")
  end

This can be implemented with:

    %div= date.strftime("%B %e")

The next affordance to be added is:

  it "should suggest that the user read more..." do
    render("/views/index.haml")
    response.should have_selector(".meals a",
                                  :href => "/meals/2009/05/15",
                                  :content => "Read more…")
  end

A simple link will make that example pass.

Only including new recipes rather than the whole meal menu is a bit trickier. The examples require building up the menu, which makes for longer examples.

One or more new recipes (the meal was prepared on 2009-05-15, new recipes would be from the same day) should be comma separated:

  it "should include a comma separated list of menu items" do
    stub!(:recipe_link).
      and_return(%Q|<a href="/recipes/2009/05/15/recipe1">chips</a>|,
                 %Q|<a href="/recipes/2009/05/15/recipe2">salsa</a>|)

    assigns[:meals][0]["menu"] << "[recipe:2009/05/15/recipe1]"
    assigns[:meals][0]["menu"] << "[recipe:2009/05/15/recipe2]"

    render("/views/index.haml")
    response.should have_selector(".menu-items",
                                  :content => "chips, salsa")
  end

Old recipes and non-recipes should not be included on the homepage:

  it "should only include new recipe menu items" do
    stub!(:recipe_link).
      and_return(%Q|<a href="/recipes/2009/05/15/recipe1">chips</a>|)

    assigns[:meals][0]["menu"] << "[recipe:2009/05/14/recipe1]"
    assigns[:meals][0]["menu"] << "chili"
    assigns[:meals][0]["menu"] << "[recipe:2009/05/15/recipe2]"

    render("/views/index.haml")
    response.should have_selector(".menu-items",
                                  :content => "chips")
  end

No new recipes should produce nothing:

  it "should not include a delimiter between \"Read more\" and new recipes when no new recipes" do
    render("/views/index.haml")
    response.should_not have_selector(".meals",
                                      :content => "|")

  end

I implement these three examples with this Haml code:

    - new_recipe_regexp = Regexp.new(date.strftime("%Y/%m/%d"))
    - new_recipes = meal["menu"].select{ |r| r =~ new_recipe_regexp }
    (
    %a{:href => date.strftime("/meals/%Y/%m/%d")}
      Read more…
    - if new_recipes.length > 0
      |
    .menu-items= wiki(new_recipes.join(", "))
    )

In that code snippet, I store a regular expression built from the meal's current date. I use that regular expression to select all recipes from the menu that match the current date. As long as there are new recipes, a "pipe" delimiter is inserted between the link to the current meal and to the new recipes. Finally, the wiki helper converts the wiki recipe text to HTML links.

I will stop there for today and pick up with the last two missing affordances tomorrow.