Background

I've been testing an API call with VCR that I can't really re-do (it works a bit like a delete) because I have to create it manually and use the resulting id in my spec. It's something like this:

describe '#delete', :vcr do
  let(:foo) { API::Foo.new('ID that I can only get manually') }

  subject { foo.delete }

  it 'changes status' do
    expect { subject }.to change foo, :status
  end

  it 'does something else' do
    # ...
  end

  it 'does a third thing' do
    # ...
  end
end

In this situation, each of the it blocks records its own cassette. But I need a new id for each new request, so when I'm re-recording my cassettes, the first it passes and the subsequent ones fail.

I could just copy/paste the first cassette with matching names for the other blocks, but it doesn't feel right.

Then I found I could use the :cassette_name option which ensures all my its use the same cassette.

So I changed my specs:

describe '#delete' do
  let(:foo) { API::Foo.new('ID that I can only get manually') }

  subject { foo.delete }

  context 'success', vcr: { cassette_name: 'API_Foo/_delete/success' } do
    it 'changes status' do
      expect { subject }.to change foo, :status
    end

    # ...
  end

  context 'failure', vcr: { cassette_name: 'API_Foo/_delete/failure' } do
    # ...
  end
end

But now I'm manually writing the cassette names to keep the same naming scheme as the automatically generated cassettes.

Proposed solution

It would be really cool if we could specify we want a single cassette to be generated based on the block path, like this:

describe '#delete' do
  subject { foo.delete }

  context 'success', vcr: { single_cassette: true } do
    # ...
  end

  context 'failure', vcr: { single_cassette: true } do
    # ...
  end
end

Sorry for the long wall of text and code, I couldn't find a succinct way to explain this.

I'd love have a go at this if you guys think it's a good idea (although I'll be leaving on vacation soon and will probably not have access to a computer for at least a month, but I'll do it then).

I realize there might be something I'm not doing right here so I'm open to suggestions that don't include adding a new feature :)