Using Factory Girl step definitions in Cucumber features (Rails 3)

Question

I'm trying to use Cucumber and Factory Girl. The following lines:

  Given I am not logged in
  And   the following user exists:
    | login  | email               | password   | confirmation |
    | user50 | [email protected] | secret50   | secret 50    | 
 ....

raises the following error:

Undefined step: "the following user exists:" (Cucumber::Undefined exception)
/home/user/RubymineProjects/project/features/sign_in.feature:9:in `And the following user exists:

You can implement step definitions for undefined steps with these snippets:
And /^the following user exists:$/ do |table|
  # table is a Cucumber::Ast::Table
  pending # express the regexp above with the code you wish you had
end

'

I've installed factory_girl_rails (even RubyMine's code completion feature works with Factory Girl step ... )

#Gemfile
group :test do
   gem "cucumber-rails", ">= 0.3.2"
   gem "factory_girl_rails"
 end

#features/support/env.rb
require 'factory_girl'
require 'factory_girl/step_definitions'

Any ideas? Thanks

---

Update: Thanks to @sj26 and @twmills I realized that I forgot to create a :user factory with Factory Girl. Once I created it, everything worked well.

Roofdeck

Do you have a users.rb factory file? – Eda

Answer 1

For those people, who trying to use FactoryGirl helpers now:

From FactoryGirl 3.5.0 these step helpers are deprecated and removed in 4.0.0: http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/25650434584/writing-better-cucumber-scenarios-or-why-were

As of FactoryGirl 3.5.0, using any of FactoryGirl’s generated step definitions will print out a deprecation warning. We’ll be removing the step definitions completely in the 4.0.0 release of FactoryGirl in accordance with SemVer. I imagine the existing code will be extracted to a gem similar to Cucumber Rails’ training wheels with a nice warning urging developers not to use the the steps.

So if you want to use FactoryGirl in Cucumber you should use it in your own step definitions.

Tourmaline

ok. if your answers gets at least 3 upvotes I will consider marking your answer as the right answer. (I do not use cucumber anymore so i cannot check) – Roofdeck

Answer 2

You need to include your factories first. factory_girl/step_definitions will iterate over your defined factories to define a step for each.

I use this in features/support/factory_girl.rb:

# Require factories...
require 'spec/factories'

# Then define steps based on factories.
require 'factory_girl/step_definitions'

Telegonus

I'm getting no such file to load -- spec/factories (LoadError) even though I have that folder and some factories I (successfully) use in rspec tests. I have also tried with require '../../spec/factories' but still no luck. As usual, RubyMine's code completion finds everything ... Very annoying, I would like to use the default steps provided by Factory Girl and not write my own.. – Roofdeck

Are you sure you have a factory :user? Can you gist your user model, factories file, cucumber support and cucumber feature? – Telegonus

Thanks, that fixed the problem. I didn't have the :user factory. Sorry, it was a newbie question (I'm using Factory Girl for the first time) – Roofdeck

Answer 3

Try this in features/step_definitions/user_steps.rb

Given /^the following user exists:$/ do |users|
  users.hashes.each do |user|
    Factory(:user,user)
  end
end

Although you may want this instead:

Given /^the following users:$/ do |users|
  etc..

Atmometer

This duplicates the functionality of factory_girl's step_definitions, but WETly. – Telegonus

Exactly, I would like to uses the factory_girl's step_definitions if possible. (If I can't, I will probably use this workaround). Thanks @Telegonus and @Atmometer – Roofdeck

@Telegonus Old habits are hard to break. Factory Girl didn't include step definitions when I started using it. Need to make the switch. – Atmometer

So how would you write the step definitions using the factory_girl's step_definitions ? – Schober

Answer 4

Ok, I get that ThoughtBot wants us to write better code, but as an upgrade crutch, we can just put this old file in features/step_definitions:

https://raw.github.com/thoughtbot/factory_girl/3.6.x/lib/factory_girl/step_definitions.rb

Embus