Render "*.feature"-files

[ghost]

Hi @tdreyno,

I would like to build an extension to render "gherkin"-files my-feature.feature into HTML. The idea behind this is the use some of the feature-files as documentation. First and foremost I would like to use the extension to generate the documentation for aruba and some internal gems I use at work.

features
  |
  +- doc
  |   |
  |   - my-feature.feature
  |
  +- tests
      |
      - my-feature.feature

The result should be something similar to http://www.relishapp.com/cucumber/aruba/v/0-11-0 but more integrated into the project's website.

The extension should have some configuration options settable via config.rb.

activate :middleman_gherkin do |e|
  e.path     = File.expand_path('../features/doc', __FILE__)       # default
  e.template = File.expand_path('../source/feature.erb', __FILE__) # default
end

Since v4.x you cannot render files into HTML which does not contain .html.format in their file names. I don't want to force users to write my-feature.html.feature files, but would like to use .feature instead. In some other issue the problem with the "missing" .html-extension was already discussed. You mentioned something about hardcoding values.

Would be possible for an extension, to tell the renderer that the result is always HTML even if the .html-part is missing.

This question is more about your experience in writing middleman-extensions: How would you implement the parser/HTML-generator. I have not decided yet how to do this. One idea is to implement it as tilt-gem, but since it requires another renderer, e.g. ERB, I'm not sure if this is the best way to go. At best I would like to leave the choice to the user which template language to use for converting feature files. This should be possible, but is there a middleman helper I can use in the extension?

Thanks a lot.

Cheers
Dennis

[tdreyno]

I would create a custom Resource type and have the extension replace any resource that is a .gerkin with a GerkinResource. That class would then have it's own render method to do whatever it wants and can set the destination_path to include .html

[ghost]

Thanks.

[sandstrom]

I'm doing some issue-gardening 🌿🌷🌾 and came across this issue.

Sorry that this has lingered for quite a while! I'd suggest either closing this (it can be solved using the method described by tdreyno).