Where/how to include helper methods for capybara integration tests

Question

I"m using capybara for my integration/acceptance tests. They're in /spec/requests/ folder. Now I have a few helper methods that I use during acceptance tests. One example is register_user which looks like this

def register_user(user)
  visit home_page
  fill_in 'user_name', :with => user.username
  fill_in 'password', :with => user.password
  click_button 'sign_up_button'
end

I want to use this method in several different acceptance tests (they're in different files). What's the best way to include this? I've tried putting it in spec/support/ but it hasn't been working for me. After spending some time on it I realized I don't even know if it's a good way of doing it so I figured I'd ask here.

Note: I am using rails 3, spork and rspec.

Solution 1

Put your helper to the spec/support folder and do something like this:

spec/support/:

module YourHelper
  def register_user(user)
    visit home_page
    fill_in 'user_name', :with => user.username
    fill_in 'password', :with => user.password
    click_button 'sign_up_button'
  end
end

RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.include YourHelper, :type => :request
end

Solution 2

I used the given solution by @VasiliyErmolovich, but I changed the type to make it work:

config.include YourHelper, :type => :feature

Comments

[cman77]

When do you use spec/support vs. spec/helpers?

[just__matt]

@cman77 spec/helpers is for testing app/helpers, spec/support files are for modules and configuration that you want to use in you specs

[Admin]

Aren't all the files inside spec/support loaded automatically?

[Nathan Bertram]

Same here ... that's if you have your test in spec/features vs. spec/requests

[Andre Schweighofer]

@Gerep spec/support is loaded automatically. But that doesn't make the helper available to RSpec automatically.

[Nakilon]

That's an adding a helper to RSpec, not Capybara.

[Nakilon]

Alright, this isolates the helper from other tests. But what if it's a Capybara/Selenium-specific helper that is commonly needed? Like some wrapper around JS that I'll need in all my test files. And that I don't want to call it via MyHelpers::my_js_helper but I want it to be as easily accessible as find.

[itsnikolay]

@Nakilon it's plain ruby, you can refactor your specs/code/DSL/capybara/selenium/whatever with it. Because everywhere include works like mixin. Find method already exists in capybara. But it doesn't prevent to create another method e.g. content_find using mixin approach.

[Nakilon]

RSpec's include and exclude -- while they look like plain Ruby they are in fact customly defined for a filtering ability and maybe even something more. While there is no "def include" in Capybara repo, maybe there is something else I don't know.

[Nakilon]

Oh, I'm wrong here. Inside the describe the include method is plain Ruby. But the problem still remains that I'll need to put this line in every context I need, in dozens of files.

[Connor Shea]

spec/support is no longer loaded automatically, there's a commented-out line in the spec_helper.rb that can be used to include the files in the support directory: Dir[Rails.root.join('spec', 'support', '**', '*.rb')].each { |f| require f }