Correct way to use shared_examples_for

Question

I might have a flawed understanding of what shared_examples_for should do, but hear me out.

Basically, I have a common navigation bar that appears in index page and new page of Forum. So I want tests for navigation bar to perform for both index page and new page. I was hoping that code below using shared_examples_for would accomplish that. But what happened was that, test cases in shared_examples_for simply is not running. To check I created failing test case within the shared_examples_for scope, but the tests didn't fail.

What am I doing wrong?

require 'spec_helper'

describe "Forums" do

  subject { page }

  shared_examples_for "all forum pages" do

    describe "should have navigation header" do
      it { should have_selector('nav ul li a', text:'Home') }
      it { should have_selector('nav ul li a', text:'About') }
    end
  end

  describe "Index forum page" do
    before { visit root_path }
    ...
  end

  describe "New forum page" do
    before { visit new_forum_path }
    ...
  end

end

Answer 1

Here's a nice intention-revealing way to bind these things together:

shared_examples_for 'a page with' do |elements|
  # the following two would be navs for a page with
  it { should have_selector 'h1', text: 'About' }
  it { should have_selector 'a', text: 'Songs' }
  # these would be dynamic depending on the page
  it { should have_selector('h1',    text: elements[:header]) }
  it { should have_selector('title', text: full_title(elements[:title])) }
end

describe "About" do
  it_behaves_like 'a page with', title: 'About', header: 'About Header' do
    before { visit about_path }
  end
end

describe "Songs" do 
  it_behaves_like 'a page with', title: 'Songs', header: 'Songs Header' do
    before { visit songs_path }
  end
end

Answer 2

Not sure what your issue is really, but how necessary is the describe block in the shared example? That's my first stab.

This code works for me.

shared_examples_for 'all pages' do
  # the following two would be navs for all pages
  it { should have_selector 'h1', text: 'About' }
  it { should have_selector 'a', text: 'Songs' }
  # these would be dynamic depending on the page
  it { should have_selector('h1',    text: header) }
  it { should have_selector('title', text: full_title(title)) }
end

describe "About" do
  before { visit about_path }

  let(:title) {'About'}
  let(:header) {'About Site'}

  it_should_behave_like 'all pages'
end

describe "Songs" do 
  before { visit songs_path }

  let(:title) { 'Songs Title' }
  let(:header) { 'Songs' }

  it_should_behave_like 'all pages'
end