Accessing on, visit, and if methods from inside PageObject class

Question

I have a Cucumber/Watir/PageObject project set up. I am trying to set the @current_page variable outside of the step_definitions inside of the actual page-object. No matter what I do, I get the error

undefined method `on' for #<TestPage:0x45044d0> (NoMethodError)

---

test_page.rb

# coding: utf-8

## Test module
class TestPage < AnotherTestPage
  include PageObject

  div(:test_button, id: 'testbutton')

  #
  # Opens test page 2
  #
  # @param [Boolean] test_button defaults to false. If true, the Test button will be selected
  # @return [PageObject] the newly created Test2Page page object
  #
  def open_test2(test_button=false)
    test_button.click if test_button
    on(Test2Page)
  end

end

---

test_steps.rb

And(/^the Test2 screen is visible$/) do
  @current_page.open_test2
end

---

I've tried includeing and extending both PageObject::PageFactory and PageNavigation, and neither worked. I also tried adding World(TestPage) and World(TestPage.new) to the bottom of the TestPage file. That also did not work, seemingly because TestPage is a class.

My question therefore is, how can I set the @current_page variable inside of my PageObject and outside of the step definitions

Answer 1

To use the on method in the page object, you need to include the PageObject::PageFactory:

# Page that calls the on method
class MyPage
  include PageObject
  include PageObject::PageFactory

  def do_stuff
    on(MyPage2)
  end
end

# Page that is returned by the on method
class MyPage2
  include PageObject
end

# Script that calls the methods and shows that the on method works
browser = Watir::Browser.new
page = MyPage.new(browser)
current_page = page.do_stuff
p current_page.class
#=> MyPage2

However, there is no way for the page object to change the @current_page that is used by the Cucumber steps. The page objects have no knowledge of the Cucumber instance's @current_page variable. I think you will have to manually assign the page:

And(/^the Test2 screen is visible$/) do
  @current_page = @current_page.open_test2
end

Note that this assumes that open_test2 is returning a page object, which it currently does (ie the on method returns a page object).