# Spinach - BDD framework on top of Gherkin

[![Gem Version](https://badge.fury.io/rb/spinach.svg)](https://badge.fury.io/rb/spinach)
![Tests](https://github.com/codegram/spinach/workflows/Tests/badge.svg)

Spinach is a high-level BDD framework that leverages the expressive
[Gherkin language][gherkin] (used by [Cucumber][cucumber]) to help you define
executable specifications of your application or library's acceptance criteria.

Conceived as an alternative to Cucumber, here are some of its design goals:

- Step maintainability: since features map to their own classes, their steps are
  just methods of that class. This encourages step encapsulation.

- Step reusability: In case you want to reuse steps across features, you can
  always wrap those in plain ol' Ruby modules.

Spinach is tested against Ruby MRI **2.4, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2** as well as **JRuby **.

## Getting started

Start by adding spinach to your Gemfile:

```ruby
group :test do
  gem 'spinach'
  # gem 'rspec'
end
```

Spinach works out-of-the-box with your favorite test suite, but you can also
use it with RSpec as well if you put the following in `features/support/env.rb`:

```ruby
require 'rspec'
```

Now create a `features` folder in your app or library and write your first
feature:

```cucumber
Feature: Test how spinach works
  In order to know what the heck is spinach
  As a developer
  I want it to behave in an expected way

  Scenario: Formal greeting
    Given I have an empty array
    And I append my first name and my last name to it
    When I pass it to my super-duper method
    Then the output should contain a formal greeting

  Scenario: Informal greeting
    Given I have an empty array
    And I append only my first name to it
    When I pass it to my super-duper method
    Then the output should contain a casual greeting
```

Now for the steps file. Remember that in Spinach steps are just Ruby classes,
following a camelcase naming convention. Spinach generator will do some
scaffolding for you:

```shell
$ spinach --generate
```

Spinach will detect your features and generate the following class:

## features/steps/test_how_spinach_works.rb

```ruby
class Spinach::Features::TestHowSpinachWorks < Spinach::FeatureSteps
  step 'I have an empty array' do
  end

  step 'I append my first name and my last name to it' do
  end

  step 'I pass it to my super-duper method' do
  end

  step 'the output should contain a formal greeting' do
  end

  step 'I append only my first name to it' do
  end

  step 'the output should contain a casual greeting' do
  end
end
```

Then, you can fill it in with your logic - remember, it's just a class, you can
use private methods, mix in modules or whatever!

```ruby
class Spinach::Features::TestHowSpinachWorks < Spinach::FeatureSteps
  step 'I have an empty array' do
    @array = Array.new
  end

  step 'I append my first name and my last name to it' do
    @array += ["John", "Doe"]
  end

  step 'I pass it to my super-duper method' do
    @output = capture_output do
      Greeter.greet(@array)
    end
  end

  step 'the output should contain a formal greeting' do
    @output.must_include "Hello, mr. John Doe"
  end

  step 'I append only my first name to it' do
    @array += ["John"]
  end

  step 'the output should contain a casual greeting' do
    @output.must_include "Yo, John! Whassup?"
  end

  private

  def capture_output
    out = StringIO.new
    $stdout = out
    $stderr = out
    yield
    $stdout = STDOUT
    $stderr = STDERR
    out.string
  end
end

module Greeter
  def self.greet(name)
    if name.length > 1
      puts "Hello, mr. #{name.join(' ')}"
    else
      puts "Yo, #{name.first}! Whassup?"
    end
  end
end
```

Then run your feature again running `spinach` and watch it all turn green! :)

## Shared Steps

You'll often find that some steps need to be used in many
features. In this case, it makes sense to put these steps in reusable
modules. For example, let's say you need a step that logs the
user into the site.

This is one way to make that reusable:

```ruby
# ... features/steps/common_steps/login.rb
module CommonSteps
  module Login
    include Spinach::DSL

    step 'I am logged in' do
      # log in stuff...
    end
  end
end
```

Using the module (in any feature):

```ruby
# ... features/steps/buying_a_widget.rb
class Spinach::Features::BuyAWidget < Spinach::FeatureSteps
  # simply include this module and you are good to go
  include CommonSteps::Login
end
```

## Audit

Over time, the definitions of your features will change. When you add, remove
or change steps in the feature files, you can easily audit your existing step
files with:

```shell
$ spinach --audit
```

This will find any new steps and print out boilerplate for them, and alert you
to the filename and line number of any unused steps in your step files.

This does not modify the step files, so you will need to paste the boilerplate
into the appropriate places. If a new feature file is detected, you will be
asked to run `spinach --generate` beforehand.

**Important**: If auditing individual files, common steps (as above) may be
reported as unused when they are actually used in a feature file that is not
currently being audited. To avoid this, run the audit with no arguments to
audit all step files simultaneously.

## Tags

Feature and Scenarios can be marked with tags in the form: `@tag`. Tags can be
used for different purposes:

- applying some actions using hooks (eg: `@javascript`, `@transaction`, `@vcr`)

```ruby
# When using Capybara, you can switch the driver to use another one with
# javascript capabilities (Selenium, Poltergeist, capybara-webkit, ...)
#
# Spinach already integrates with Capybara if you add
# `require spinach/capybara` in `features/support/env.rb`.
#
# This example is extracted from this integration.
Spinach.hooks.on_tag("javascript") do
  ::Capybara.current_driver = ::Capybara.javascript_driver
end
```

- filtering (eg: `@module-a`, `@customer`, `@admin`, `@bug-12`, `@feat-1`)

```cucumber
# Given a feature file with this content

@feat-1
Feature: So something great

  Scenario: Make it possible

  @bug-12
  Scenario: Ensure no regression on this
```

Then you can run all Scenarios in your suite tagged `@feat-1` using:

```shell
$ spinach --tags @feat-1
```

Or only Scenarios tagged either `@feat-1` or `@bug-12` using:

```shell
$ spinach --tags @feat-1,@bug-12
```

Or only Scenarios tagged `@feat-1` that aren't tagged `@bug-12` using:

```shell
$ spinach --tags @feat-1,~@bug-12
```

By default Spinach will ignore Scenarios marked with the tag `@wip` or whose
Feature is marked with the tag `@wip`. Those are meant to be work in progress,
scenarios that are pending while you work on them. To explicitly run those, use
the `--tags` option:

```shell
$ spinach --tags @wip
```

## Hook architecture

Spinach provides several hooks to allow you performing certain steps before or
after any feature, scenario or step execution.

So, for example, you could:

```ruby
Spinach.hooks.before_scenario do |scenario|
  clear_database
end

Spinach.hooks.on_successful_step do |step, location|
  count_steps(step.scenario.steps)
end

Spinach.hooks.after_run do |status|
  send_mail if status == 0
end
```

Full hook documentation is here:

[Spinach's hook documentation](https://github.com/codegram/spinach/blob/master/lib/spinach/hooks.rb)

## Local Before and After Hooks

Sometimes it feels awkward to add steps into feature file just because you need to do some test setup and cleanup. And it is equally awkward to add a global hooks for this purpose. For example, if you want to add a session timeout feature, to do so, you want to set the session timeout time to 1 second just for this feature, and put the normal timeout back after this feature. It doesn't make sense to add two steps in the feature file just to change the session timeout value. In this scenario, a `before` and `after` blocks are perfect for this kind of tasks. Below is an example implementation:

```ruby
class Spinach::Features::SessionTimeout < Spinach::FeatureSteps
  attr_accessor :original_timeout_value
  before do
    self.original_timeout_value = session_timeout_value
    change_session_timeout_to 1.second
  end

  after do
    change_session_timeout_to original_timeout_value
  end

  # remaining steps
end
```

## RSpec mocks

If you need access to the [rspec-mocks](https://github.com/rspec/rspec-mocks) methods in your steps, add this line to your `env.rb`:

```ruby
require 'spinach/rspec/mocks'
```

## Reporters

Spinach supports two kinds of reporters by default: `stdout` and `progress`.
You can specify them when calling the `spinach` binary:

    spinach --reporter progress

When no reporter is specified, `stdout` will be used by default.

Other reporters:

- For a console reporter with no colors, try [spinach-console-reporter][spinach-console-reporter] (to be used with Jenkins)
- For a rerun reporter, try [spinach-rerun-reporter][spinach-rerun-reporter] (writes failed scenarios in a file)

## Wanna use it with Rails 3?

Use [spinach-rails](http://github.com/codegram/spinach-rails)

## Other rack-based frameworks

Check out our [spinach-sinatra demo](https://github.com/codegram/spinach-sinatra-demo)

## Resources

- [Landing page](http://codegram.github.com/spinach)
- [Slides](http://codegram.github.com/spinach-presentation)
- [Blog post](http://blog.codegram.com/2011/10/how-to-achieve-more-clean-encapsulated-modular-step-definitions-with-spinach)
- [API Documentation](http://rubydoc.info/github/codegram/spinach/master/frames)
- [Google group](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/spinach_bdd)

### Related gems

- [guard-spinach](http://github.com/codegram/guard-spinach)
- [spinach-rails](http://github.com/codegram/spinach-rails)
- [spinach-console-reporter][spinach-console-reporter] (to be used with Jenkins)
- [spinach-rerun-reporter][spinach-rerun-reporter] (writes failed scenarios in a file)
- [spring-commands-spinach](https://github.com/jvanbaarsen/spring-commands-spinach) (to be used with spring)

### Demos

- [spinach rails demo](https://github.com/codegram/spinach-rails-demo)
- [spinach sinatra demo](https://github.com/codegram/spinach-sinatra-demo)
- [simple todo Rails app](https://github.com/codegram/tasca-spinach-demo)

## Contributing

- [List of spinach contributors](https://github.com/codegram/spinach/contributors)

You can easily contribute to Spinach. Its codebase is simple and
[extensively documented][documentation].

- Fork the project.
- Make your feature addition or bug fix.
- Add specs for it. This is important so we don't break it in a future
  version unintentionally.
- Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history.
  If you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version
  in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull.
- Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

## License

MIT (Expat) License. Copyright 2011-2023 [Codegram Technologies](http://codegram.com)

[gherkin]: http://github.com/codegram/gherkin-ruby
[cucumber]: http://github.com/cucumber/cucumber
[documentation]: http://rubydoc.info/github/codegram/spinach/master/frames
[spinach-console-reporter]: https://github.com/ywen/spinach-console-reporter
[spinach-rerun-reporter]: https://github.com/javierav/spinach-rerun-reporter