Setting up the environment

• Created a new directory Battle. I ran bundler init to create a Gemfile. I amended the file to include the rspec and sinatra gems.
• Added a file named app.rb to the root of my directory.
• I set up Sinatra using the modular style by adding the following to the top of my app.rb file: require 'sinatra/base class Battle < Sinatra::Base end
• Defining apps like this at the top level is only suitable for micro-applications.
• I have defined my Battle class as a subclass of the Sinatra::Base. My class will inherit all of the DSL of sinatra.
• I added run! if app_file == $0 at the end of my Battle class so that the server starts if the ruby file 'app.rb' is run directly.
• Rack is a ruby framework that responds to the method call(env), and returns an array of three elements: status, header and body. This standardised rack API means that any application we build that is Rack compatible works on any server that implements a Rack handler.
• I therefore created a config.ru (rackup file), which allows my app.rb to be run using any Rack handler: require './app' run Battle

Setting up Capybara

• I added capybara to the Gemfile.

• Since the my app is a Rack app, I explicitly set the following in my RSpec helper file: Capybara.app = Battle

• I added the following to my spec_helper require 'capybara' require 'capybara/rspec' require 'rspec' ENV['RACK_ENV'] = 'test' Capybara.app = Battle require File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), '..', 'app.rb')

• Inside the spec directory I created a features directory to house all of my feature tests, which I will write using Capybara. My unit tests will be written in a separate folder in vanilla RSpec.

New concepts

• A new concept that we learnt about was the POST/ redirect / GET pattern. It is important to separate POST requests and the rendering of their view. This allows the page shown after a form submission to be reloaded, shared, or bookmarked without ill effects, such as submitting the form another time.
• The way we did this was to use a sinatra session. A session is a short-term information store that lives on the server. It allows basic pieces of information to be stored across multiple requests.
• I added the line enable :sessions within my Battle class.
• In the post '/names' route I stored the player names in the session instead of assigning them as instance variables. session[:player_1_name] = params[:player_1_name]
• I then redirected to the '/play' route.
• To keep my spec folder DRY, I set up a helper class, by creating a new spec folder within the features folder named web_helpers.rb. I amended my spec_helper document to require this file.
• To conform with the separation of concerns principle, I extracted the responsibility of the session to a new class named Players. This class makes up part of the model layer of my app.