RSpec: execute the same expectation under different circumstances

Question

I want to make sure that an element on my website is only displayed when logging in.

This is how I achieve it at the moment:

it 'displays statistics when logged in' do
  expect {
    login_as(create :user)
    refresh_page
  }.to change {
    page.has_content? 'Statistics'
  }.from(false).to true # I know, "to true" is redundant here, but I like it to be explicit
end

This somehow feels clumsy. Especially, when the spec fails, I don't get the nice error message I usually get when doing an expect(page).to have_content 'Statistics', I just get something like "expected result to have changed from false to true, but did not change" which isn't very informative.

I know there are shared examples, but they feel a bit too much for this case.

I tried something like the following, but didn't succeed either:

it 'displays statistics when logged in' do
  expect(expect_to_have_content_statistics).to raise_error

  login_as(create :user)
  refresh_page

  expect_to_have_content_statistics
end

def expect_to_have_content_statistics
  expect(page).to have_content 'Statistics'
end

Any ideas? I don't want to write the expectation 2 times, as this is very error prone.

Answer 1

You're testing two different cases - would suggest to separate them.

describe 'statistics' do

  def have_statistics
    have_content('Statistics')
  end

  before { visit_statistics_page }

  it { expect(page).to_not have_statistics }

  it 'displays statistics when logged in' do
    login_as(create :user)
    expect(page).to have_statistics
  end
end