Run your own code before specific RSpec examples

Posted About 12 years ago. Visible to the public.

You probably know about the possibility to tag scenarios in Cucumber to run your own piece of code before the actual scenario is run which looks like that:

@foo
Scenario: Do something
...

and you place the following snippet into support/env.rb:

Before('@foo') do
  puts "This is run every time a @foo tagged scenario is hit"
end

You can tag RSpec examples like this:

it 'does something', :foo => true do
  ...
end

What you need is the following within the RSpec.configure do |config| block within spec_helper.rb

config.before(:each, :foo => true) do
  puts "This is run every time a tagged rspec example is hit"
end
Thomas Eisenbarth
makandra.de
Say thanks3
Last edit
About 12 years ago
License
Source code in this card is licensed under the MIT License.

Related cards:

Cancelling the ActiveRecord callback chain

What Rails version Within before_* Within after_*
Cancel later callbacks Rails 1-4 `re...

Running Rspec examples by name, or: Running a single shared example

When an Rspec example fails, I usually investigate by running that example again using rspec <file:line>. However, this does not work with shared examples, since Rspec doesn't know in which context the shared example should be run.

But there is...

Run code before or after an existing Rake task

Before

To run additional code before an existing Rake tasks you can add a dependency like this:

task :before_task do
  # runs before :existing_task
end

Rake::Task[:existing_task].enhance [:before_task]

The new dependency will be...

Tracking Down Slow-Running Examples in RSpec ยป Idol Hands: An Alpha Geek Guide to Ruby on Rails, DIY, and More

Passing the --profile flag to RSpec produces some additional output, namely the running times of the ten slowest examples in your specs.

Dealing with ActiveRecord::RecordNotSaved

If you get an ActiveRecord::RecordNotSaved error, a method inside one of your model's callback chains (before_save etc) possibly returned false.

This commonly happens when you have a method setting attributes and the last one is a boolean set...

A nicer way to run RSpec and/or Cucumber

geordi, our collection of awesome shell scripts, has been extended by three scripts to help you call RSpec or Cucumber:

cuc

This script runs Cucumber the way you want it:

  • Prints some line feeds to easi...

Testing shared traits or modules without repeating yourself

When two classes implement the same behavior (methods, callbacks, etc.), you should extract that behavior into a trait or module. This card describes how to test that extracted behavior without repeating y...

Using before(:context) / before(:all) in RSpec will cause you lots of trouble unless you know what you are doing

TL;DR Avoid before(:context) (formerly before(:all)), use before(:example) (formerly before(:each)) instead.

If you do use before(:context), you need to know what you are doing and take care of any cleanup yourself.

Why?

...

RSpec: Efficiently rerunning failed examples during development

Note

Don't use reruns as a mean to work around flaky tests. You should always try to fix those instead of rerunning them regularly.

Setup

Configure RSpec to persist the r...

How to use Simplecov to find untested code in a Rails project with RSpec and Cucumber

Simplecov is a code coverage tool. This helps you to find out which parts of your application are not tested.

Integrating this in a rails project with rspec, cucumber and parallel_tests is easy.

  1. Add i...
Posted by Thomas Eisenbarth to makandra dev (2012-02-21 16:46)
This website uses short-lived cookies to improve usability.
or learn more