Is there a way of grouping Protractor's scenarios into contexts?

Question

I was wondering if there's a way of grouping Protractor's scenarios into contexts like it's possible in Capybara?

For example, if I was writing tests for post privacy settings, I could have context for user that is not logged in and context for logged in user that divides into different scenarios based on relation between the users. Another example:

feature 'allows user to share' do
  let!(:post) { create :post }

  before do
    create :feed_post, user: user, post: post
    app.sign_in user
  end

  context 'with comment' do
    subject { feed.share_modal }

    before { feed.posts.first.share_post }

    scenario { is_expected.to have_content t('social_sharing.new.title') }
    scenario { is_expected.to have_button t('social_sharing.new.action') }

    context 'sharing with a comment' do
      before do
        feed.share_modal.comment_on_share 'a nice comment'
        feed.share_modal.submit_share_form
        feed.wait_until_share_modal_invisible
      end

      scenario 'closes the modal' do
        expect(feed).to have_no_share_modal
      end

      scenario 'shows shared message' do
        expect(feed.posts.first)
        .to have_content "#{user.name} shared #{post.user.name.possessive} post"
        expect(feed.posts.first).to have_content 'a nice comment'
      end
    end
  end
end

Context allows me to make the specs DRY, because I can add a before block inside it that contains steps that are repeating for scenarios inside the context. Is it possible with Protractor?

Are you may be asking [about specs vs suites](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30331018/suites-vs-specs-protractor)? — alecxe, Aug 07 '16 at 03:46

Ram Pasala · Answer 1 · 2016-08-08T09:57:14.717

Short answer to your question is - No, there is no direct capability in protractor such as contexts in capybara,Since you come from Rails background let me give some brief insights on protractor:

Protractor is a node.js program built on top of webdriver.js so all its methods are asynchronous and return promises.
The default testing framework for protractor is Jasmine2.0currently.

Now to DRY your specs you have two good options:

If you want to continue with jasmine as your testing framework with protractor you can DRY your specs by using hooks. Jeff has written a good post on this - http://www.assertselenium.com/angularjs/protractor-jasmine-pre-post-processing-methods/
If you would like to use your capybara experience in protractor you would have to switch to CucumberJS as your testing framework. I have a written a post on this - http://www.assertselenium.com/bdd/e2e-testing-with-protractor-cucumber-js/ :) You can use background in cucumber which work exactly as contexts in capybara!

Is there a way of grouping Protractor's scenarios into contexts?

1 Answers1