Building a Rails app from scratch - What should be the ideal workflow ?

Question

Hello,

I am going to develop a Rails app pretty soon. Currently I have nothing but an idea + few wireframes. I would like to know how shall I proceed?

At what stage should I implement/write the following

• Cucumber features
• Rspec tests
• Code
• Refactoring code

What gems/plugins do you use? [ For common tasks ]

Answer 1

If you're going to be using Cucumber, you should:

1. Write the cucumber features
2. Run them and make sure they fail accordingly
3. Write just enough code to make those features pass.

From my understanding, the Cucumber framework isn't really meant to test existing code, but is more a part of the development process. So I suppose the overall workflow should probably be something like:

1. Cucumber stuff
2. Write some code
3. Functional tests (such as RSpec, as you mentioned)
4. Repeat as needed
5. Code touch-ups, refactors

Edit: As for gems/plugins, it really depends on what your app is going to be doing.