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244 CHAPTER 10 Tracking state
used, then you’d have no record of that state ever existing. It’s best if, once states are
created and used on a ticket, they can’t be deleted. 1
To track the states, you’ll let users leave a comment. With a comment, users will be
able to leave a text message about the ticket and may also elect to change the state of
the ticket to something else by selecting it from a drop-down box. But not all users will
be able to leave a comment and change the state. You’ll protect both creating a comment
and changing the state.
By the time you’re done with all of this, the users of your application will have the
ability to add comments to your tickets. Some users, due to permission restriction, will
be able to change the state of a ticket through the comment interface.
You’ll begin with creating that interface for a user to create a comment and then
build on top of that the ability for the user to change the state of a ticket while adding
a comment. Let’s get into it.
10.1 Leaving a comment
Let’s get started by adding the ability to leave
a comment. When you’re done you will have
a simple form that looks like figure 10.1.
To get started with this you’ll write a
Cucumber feature that goes through the
process of creating a comment. When you’re
done with this feature, you will have a comment
form at the bottom of the show action
for the TicketsController which you’ll
then use as a base for adding your state dropdown
box later on. Put this feature in a new
file at features/creating_comments.feature,
and make it look like the following listing.
Listing 10.1 features/creating_comments.feature
Feature: Creating comments
In order to update a ticket's progress
As a user
I want to leave comments
Figure 10.1 The comment form
Background:
Given there are the following users:
| email | password |
| user@ticketee.com | password |
And I am signed in as them
And there is a project called "Ticketee"
And "user@ticketee.com" can view the "Ticketee" project
And "user@ticketee.com" has created a ticket for this project:
1 Alternatively, these states could be moved into an “archive” state of their own so they couldn’t be assigned to
new tickets but still would be visible on older tickets.