Getting Rails Records by name in Cucumber (even if they don't have a name)

README.md

Usage

Given(/^... named "(.*)"$/) |name|
  Thing.create name: name
  add_named_record name: name, record: thing
end

Given(/^... named "(.*)" has stuff$/) |name|
  thing = fetch_named_record name: name
  thing.do_stuff
end

named_records.rb

# features/support/named_records.rb
module NamedRecords

  def add_named_record(name: nil, record: nil, class_name: nil, id: nil)
    if record
      class_name = record.class.name
      id = record.id
    end

    named_records[name] = {
     class_name: class_name,
     id: id
    }
  end

  def fetch_named_record(name)
    named_records[name][:class_name].constantize.find named_records[name][:id]
  end

  def named_records
    @named_records ||= {}
  end

end

World(NamedRecords)