IMHO, this should be considered an antipattern. It will come back to bite you.

This pattern defines attributes which are then overridden in #it examples or nested contexts. So, when someone tries to actually UNDERSTAND this spec to figure out what it does, they have to walk ALL the way up a tree of defined #let (overriding attributes) to figure out what’s going on. This is VERY confusing. Just write out the code in #it blocks (and move *some* redundant code into #before blocks) and the spec will be easier to understand and therefore maintain (which will increase your overall productivity).

subject { create :vehicle, attributes }
let(:attributes) { {name: ‘Dmytrii’ } }
its(:to_s) { should == ‘Dmytrii’ }

But that doesn’t look too good either and then I would apply macro:

to_s_from_attributes({name: ‘Dmytrii’}) { should == ‘Dmytrii’ }

Which would look similarly to https://gist.github.com/3014807#file_tax_spec.rb

I really REALLY wanted to dig into this stuff further with him, but the next session started and I didn’t get a chance to to get any further than that. I don’t think the let/let! syntax would really be useful were this use case not in mind though.

That said, he seems to stick w/ duplication in his it blocks.

Regarding FactoryGirl, I agree w/ Richard, though I tend to use traits to try and keep things organized.

PS – When you find that your specs are getting slow (if you only test 1 thing per ‘it’ block as I do), look into the Machinery gem. You lose a lot of the beautiful expressiveness, but you reclaim a lot of the speed.

describe “#to_s”
it ‘returns the “name” attribute’ do
vehicle = FactoryGirl.create(:vehicle, name: ‘Carzilla’, type_of_sale: ‘New’)
vehicle.to_s.should eq ‘Carzilla’
end
end

This can even improve readability (indicative factory names) and also has the benefit of exposing that object “type” to other parts of the test suite, or even production (depending how you use FactoryGirl).

Aside, on the GoRuCo 2012 footage, can you can still watch the JustinTV “live” stream and just jump around in it. I watched part of David’s talk yesterday.