Symbols: Passing Data Between Test Tables

Sometimes you want to pass information between test tables. Let's say you added a record to a database, and the database automatically generated a key to that record. And lets say that in another table you wanted to use that key to fetch the record back. You can use symbols for this.

SaveRecordInDatabase
name	date	=key?
Bob	today	bobKey
Bill	later	billKey

In this table two records are added to the database. The keys for each record are saved in symbols named bobKey and billKey. The =key? header indicates that the output of the key() method of the fixture is to be stored in a symbol whose name is in the cell.

FetchRecordsFromDatabase
key=	fetch()	name	date
billKey	true	Bill	later
bobKey	true	Bob	today

In this table the two keys are used to fetch the database records. The key= header indicates that the value of the symbol whose name is in the cell should be stored in the key variable of the fixture.