Good sources for learning Cucumber and RSpec?

Question

What are some good videos, articles, ebooks, etc for learning Cucumber and RSpec?

I'm aware of the PeepCode screencasts and The RSpec Book from Pragmatic, but wasn't sure if there were any other solid resources.

score 13 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 06 '11 at 01:07

The great thing about the Ruby community is the willingness to share; of course there are the companies like O'Reilly and Red Dirt that don't give away their videos so I don't buy their products any more and/or won't go to their conferences.

Here are some videos specifically about Cucumber and RSpec:
BDD with Cucumber
Cucumber: Automating the Requirements Language You Already Speak
Behaviour Driven Development with RSpec
Working Outside-in with Cucumber and RSpec
Beyond Test Driven Development: Behaviour Driven Development

Some general videos about TDD/BDD:
Test-Driven Development and Refactoring - Part One
Test-Driven Development and Refactoring - Part Two

One of the best free videos on the Ruby Object model
(I bought the Pragmatic series on metaprogramming after seeing this):
The Ruby Object Model - Dave Thomas

Here are some sites I've gotten some great videos off of:
http://confreaks.net/videos
http://www.bestechvideos.com/
http://www.engineyard.com/blog/community/scotland-on-rails/

Oh, and don't forget Google videos.

And here's a great little blog post with links to 20 articles on Cucumber:
http://www.robbyonrails.com/articles/2009/04/09/20-articles-on-cucumber-and-a-free-beverage-recipe

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 01 '10 at 21:07

2

There are a couple of paid screencasts on BDDcasts.com that cover cucumber:

http://bddcasts.com/series/urlagg/episodes/cucumber-part-1

http://bddcasts.com/series/urlagg/episodes/cucumber-part-2

There's also a reverse chronological ordering of blog posts and tutorials about cucumber on their github wiki:

http://github.com/aslakhellesoy/cucumber/wiki/tutorials-and-related-blog-posts

answered Nov 01 '10 at 21:07

Aaron Massey

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I took a look at BDDCast's samples for their cucumber episodes (http://www.mefeedia.com/watch/32656993) and I have to say I'm very unimpressed. They have horrible sound, no explanations, lot's of dead air, and no real content. It was basically like watching two guys pair program without them actually explaining anything. Not worth $5, not worth $1 even. – Nov 07 '10 at 17:23
That's a fair comment Mike, but one of the problems with some of the more polished screencasts is that people don't really program like that. They certainly don't do it like that right out of the gate. Thus, there's some authenticity to the BDDcasts. Having said that, I would have felt better if you got both parts for $5 rather than paying for each of them. – Aaron Massey Nov 07 '10 at 19:42

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 05 '10 at 15:39

I would also recommend Ryan Bates Railscasts episodes:

http://railscasts.com/episodes?search=cucumber

or for all of his testing resources including RSpec:

http://railscasts.com/tags/7

Finally, I always learn a lot by reviewing the features of other people's projects. Then you can see some real world usage rather than just some tailored examples. For example:

https://github.com/radiant/radiant/tree/master/features/

Enjoy!

Good sources for learning Cucumber and RSpec?

3 Answers3