rspec and rails and capybara: how to use same test to test 6 different variations of a factory

Question

Our app supports multiple type of accounts so a lot of our tests iterate across all the account types.

However, a common pattern we have is the first steps are the same for each account type, but MID-way thru we want to test some of the unique aspects of each account type. Here's a high level view of one test:

all_account_types.each do |account_type|

• create an account factory with trait account_type
• create manager factory for the account
• 5 people factories opt-in to that account
• 1 person then opts out
• a manager creates and sends a broadcast
• the one opt-out does not get the message
• the four opt-ins get the message
• verify the format of the message (which DEPENDS on the type of account)

That last test is the issue... the test we run depends on the type of account... Currently we have logic inside the test that says if account_type==X then Y.should include(Z) and that works as far as doing the test, but it would be nicer

Answer 1

Don't forget that let is lazy-evaluated, which means you can override the test setup before an example or context:

context "Accounts" do
  let(:account) { Factory.create(:generic_account) }

  it "behaves like an account" do
    # ...
  end

  context "Manager account" do
    let(:account) { Factory.create(:manager_account }

    it "behaves like a manager account" do
       account.type.should == "manager"
       # ...
    end
  end
end