Add Data Tables

[jowers]

I've added a failing feature for this one - I think we'll need a few more features, but I've kept it simple for now - just a single row. I've also guessed at a tcl proc name - I suspect that will have to change once I've thought about it a bit more.

The other types that I think we'll definitely need are:

| heading_1 | heading_2 |
| data 1    | data 2    |

| heading_1 | data 1 |
| heading_2 | data 2 |

and, of course, something with multiple values in:

| heading_1 | heading_2 |
| row_1 1   | row_1 2   |
| row_2 1   | row_2 2   |
| row_3 1   | row_3 2   |

[mattwynne]

Looks good. Do you need any help on the Ruby side?

[jowers]

I've got a starting point for the ruby, I suspect I'll need to you tidy it up and "rubify" it though. I've started with:

def data_table(arg)
  @arguments << arg.raw
end

In the ArgumentList class, and proved that I'm getting that passed through to the tcl. Given that it's not in a "tcl" format, I suppose I should modify it in the ruby first before passing it through... I'll have a go at that next.
Once I start writing that much ruby code, should I have ruby unit tests somewhere?

[mattwynne]

Yeah that looks right. I think there's one spec for the StepDefinitions class, so you might be able to use that if you want a smaller lever. Run the specs with rake or rspec.

I think that #raw is going to give you an Array of Array of String which should translate into tcl primitives OK. Let's see...

[jowers]

I think this will come back to the old tcl phrase of "everything's a string" - In the tcl, I'm getting:

[["first_column", "second_column"]]

I need to find out how to turn a string into at least a list so I can try to do something with it...

[jowers]

Ok, I've got something that kind of works in tcl, although I'm not that pleased/proud of it:

proc _convert_ruby_raw_to_tcl_lists {raw} {
  set raw [regsub -all {,} $raw ""]
  set raw [regsub -all {\[} $raw "{"]
  set raw [regsub -all {\]} $raw "}"]
  set raw [lindex $raw 0]

  return $raw
}

That results in a tcl list of lists which I can work with (arrays in tcl are a bit of a pain). I was thinking that in the "raw" form, a list of lists would be a good start, and then for getting hashes, we can use a dict.

It's pretty messy using regsubs (and likely to break as soon as there is a table with any of these characters in). Do you think it makes more sense to get the ruby to pass through the data in "tcl list" format - i.e. to convert:

[["first_column", "second_column"]]

into

{"first_column" "second_column"}

?

[mattwynne]

@jowers do you think this will do for now, if we tidy up the commits?

I think we could add the table helper methods in later iterations.

[jowers]

Yep, I think so.

[jowers]

I think we're ready to merge this one back. I've added a section to the README explaining the use of tables in step definitions (as a side note, we probably need to edit the README as it's now a bit sprawling and could do with a few sub-headings - I suspect my use of tenses is all over the place).

Does the automatic merge thing in github do all the squashing of comments for you?

[mattwynne]

Yes, I think it's ready. The GitHub merge button does not squash commits. If you want to use that, the right thing to do is to use git rebase -i master, squash / tidy the commits in the branch manually, do a git push origin +data-tables to force-push it. You'll see the newly tidied commit history on this PR, then you can merge it in.

[mattwynne]

Otherwise, just use git checkout master && git merge data-tables --squash as usual.

[jowers]

Ok, merged this one as well.

I guess I should do another release now that we have these 2 in place. IIRC, I need to do the following for that:

• Update the version file with the new version
• bundle build
• bundle release

Is that all, or have I forgotten something?

[mattwynne]

It's rake build and rake release but I will also need to give you release karma on rubygems.org. I'll put some instructions up for that.

[aslakhellesoy]

Always a good idea to put release instructions in CONTRIBUTING.md

[mattwynne]

Yeah so @jowers if you look in https://github.com/cucumber-ltd/bbc-a11y/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md you'll see what you need to do to get release karma.

[jowers]

I've just released v0.0.4 to rubygems. Closing pull request.

[mattwynne]

\o/