Specs2Tests: turn those acceptance criteria into BDD tests

I had a simple problem today. I had to turn this:

… into this:

[TestFixture]
public class When_depositing_money_into_an_account : Specification
{
    [Test]
    public void should_add_the_specified_amount_into_the_account()
    {

    }
}

[TestFixture]
public class When_withdrawing_money_from_an_account : Specification
{
    [Test]
    public void should_withdraw_the_specified_amount_from_the_account()
    {

    }

    [Test]
    public void should_specify_that_the_withdrawal_was_successful()
    {

    }
}

I really didn’t want to do all of this typing every time, so I wrote code to do it for me. It works like this:

1) Copy the acceptance criteria text onto the clipboard
2) Run Specs2Tests.exe (will put the code onto the clipboard for you)
3) Paste the code into your code file

Now I can get all of my acceptance criteria nailed down in a text file where I don’t have the ceremony of a programming language, then let something convert them into tests. Since I just cranked this out today, I’m guessing that it doesn’t handle every scenario that you might think of, and it only writes out C# code. There is no reason that it couldn’t spit out VB.NET, RSpec, or anything else. If it doesn’t do what you want, get on github, create a fork, and send me a patch!

The code is here: http://github.com/jonkruger/specs2tests. Have fun.