TL;DR

Let’s introduce page objects into our awesome browser automation project.

The following pull request shows changes for introducing page objects for the home page.

features/support/home.rb

Page objects gem searches for page object files in support folder. The page object is a Ruby class that includes the PageObject library. page_url is a page object attribute that holds page URL (note that attribute name explains its purpose – this is clean code kata). The value of page_url looks cryptic, but only if you never heard of Ruby On Rails template engine.

<%= %>

are start and stop characters for the template. This template will receive the params dictionary with one dictionary key value :base_url (in Ruby, variable with : is called symbol and dictionary keys are usually symbols).

features/step_definitions/home.rb

visit

is a page object factory. It accepts page object class name, using_params: is key with a value that is a dictionary with page object params. As we stated in page object HomePage, we expect a dictionary with key base_url and value @app[‘SITE’] (application.yml has this parameter value.)

on

is factory that accepts page object class name, and it returns the Watir Browser object. That object has a url attribute that holds current page url.

You have your first page objects implementation. Run cucumber cmd, and you should have one scenario pass and one fail.