Installing JDave

After creating a java project, I simply downloaded the last version of JDave and extracted all jar in lib directory of my project:

They are a lot of jars, and I’m sure I won’t use all of them, but it’s just a try so it doesn’t deserve the time to filter only the used ones.

JBehave is a story runner, so each scenario must be written as:

Given something
When something happens
Then this happens

Instead, JDave is a specification engine and each scenario show a behavior of a class:

AThingIWantToWrite
  - ShouldDoThis
  - ShouldDoThat
  - ShouldntDoThat

In other words, JBehave is similar to Cucumber, JDave is similar to RSpec.

Writing a specification is really straightforward:
first of all, we create a Specification object, passing the object we want to write; then we create a serie of inner classes:

@RunWith(JDaveRunner.class)
public class StringTemplaterSpec extends Specification<ThingIWantToWrite> {
	public class AThingIWantToWrite {
		public void ShouldDoThis() {
		}
		public void ShouldDoThat() {
		}
        }
   ...
}

As JBehave, JDave is a wrapper built over JUnit, so we can use our Ide integration to run the specifications.
That’s it!

The code

As in JBehave try, I implemented the same scenarios as in Corey Haines Video:

package biz.scalzo.kata.stringtemplater.jdave;

import org.junit.runner.RunWith;

import jdave.Specification;
import jdave.junit4.JDaveRunner;

@RunWith(JDaveRunner.class)
public class StringTemplaterSpec extends Specification<StringTemplater> {
	public class AStringTemplater {
		private StringTemplater stringTemplater;

		public void create() {
			stringTemplater = new StringTemplater();
		}

		public void shouldReturnEmptyWhenAnEmptyStringIsPassed() {
			specify(stringTemplater.replace(""), must.equal(""));
		}

		public void shouldReturnTheOriginalStringWhenNoMarkersArePassed() {
			specify(stringTemplater.replace("original string"), must.equal("original string"));
		}

		public void shouldReplaceAToken() {
			specify(stringTemplater.replace("Hello, $name","name: giordano"),
					must.equal("Hello, giordano"));
		}

		public void shouldReplaceTwoTokens() {
			specify(stringTemplater.replace("Hello, $name, how a $attitude day","name: giordano, attitude:  wonderful"),
					must.equal("Hello, giordano, how a wonderful day"));
		}

		public void shouldRemoveNotProvidedMarkers() {
			specify(stringTemplater.replace("Hello, $name, how a $attitude day","name: giordano"),
					must.equal("Hello, giordano, how a  day"));
		}
	}

}

The Junit view of Eclipse is very explicative of the behaviors of StringTemplater:

For sake of completeness, this is the final implementation of StringTemplater:

package biz.scalzo.kata.stringtemplater.jdave;

import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Iterator;

public class StringTemplater {

	public String replace(String stringToReplace) {
		return replace(stringToReplace, "");
	}

	public String replace(String stringToReplace, String markers) {
		return replace(stringToReplace, initialIterator(markers));
	}

	private String[] tupla(String pair) {
		return pair.split(":");
	}

	private Iterator<String> initialIterator(String markers) {
		return Arrays.asList(markers.split(",")).iterator();
	}

	private String replace(String stringToReplace, Iterator<String> markers) {
		if (!markers.hasNext())
			return stringToReplace;
		String[] pair = tupla(markers.next());
		String newString = stringToReplace.replace(name(pair), value(pair));
		return replaceEmptyMarkers(replace(newString, markers));
	}

	private String replaceEmptyMarkers(String replace) {
		return replace.replaceAll("\\$\\w+", "");
	}

	private String value(String[] pair) {
		return (pair.length != 2) ? "" : pair[1].trim();
	}

	private String name(String[] pair) {
		if (pair.length != 2)
			return "";
		return "$" + pair[0].trim();
	}
}

Conclusions

JDave is very easy to learn and the specifications written throught it are very complete and expressive.
If I have to make a choice, I liked slightly more JDave, but I think are just two tools: BDD is a way to think, not a framework or an engine to use.

In conclusions, I believe JBehave and JDave could be used together, the former to describe the user stories, at user level, the latter to describe the behaviors of the classes, at developer level.

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