BDD Rails: A starter kit

Hello there! So you think BDD is a great way to talk about software? Are you ready to codify some of those conversations? Do you build apps in rails? If so you've come to the right place.

bdd-rails was built to provide a set of generators for a rails app. We provide an opinionated setup for using rspec + capybara to feature test your application.

BDD starts with conversations

Many think BDD is about a certain testing style, it is and it isn't. BDD is much more about the conversations around the desired and undesired behaviour of a system.

If you're not having conversations about your system in a BDD style then that is where you should start!

Codifying Behaviour

Coming soon... for now read the following articles to find out about the style of tests we're writing:

• http://lukemorton.co.uk/thoughts/2016-01-09-feature-testing-in-2016
• https://about.futurelearn.com/blog/how-we-write-readable-feature-tests-with-rspec/
• https://www.madetech.com/blog/feature-testing-with-rspec

Creating a new rails app

Firstly, make sure you have rails installed!

gem install rails

Now let's create a new app!

rails new --skip-test-unit my_bdd_app
cd my_bdd_app

Next we want to install bdd-rails:

echo "gem 'bdd-rails', path: '../../'" >> Gemfile
bundle

We want to install our BDD setup in your rails app:

bundle exec rails g bdd_rails:install

And setup our DB:

bundle exec rake db:migrate

Now you can run your (empty) test suite:

bundle exec rspec

How about an example?

To install a full example of feature test and code into your application run the following:

bundle exec rails g bdd_rails:example
bundle exec rspec

Now you have a passing example! Feel free to explore the example code :)