RSpec: automatic creation of VCR cassettes

You can configure VCR to automatically record/replay cassettes for any RSpec example tagged as :vcr or vcr: true.

• If a spec is not tagged with :vcr, VCR will complain about any attempted HTTP request. This is the default behaviour. If you want to turn this off temporarily, e.g. to communicate with an actual API while writing a new spec, simply add the line c.allow_http_connections_when_no_cassette = true to the VCR.configure-block.

• If a spec is tagged with :vcr, a cassette with an automatically determined name will be generated on the first test run and replayed on subsequent runs:

Here is an example for a spec using the :vcr tag:

# spec/models/<model_name>/<file_name>_spec.rb
describe ModelName::ExampleApi do

  describe '<group>' do
    it '<example>', :vcr do
      # calls to API
      # expectations
    end
  end
  
end

Built-in hook

VCR can define the hook for you by configuring:

VCR.configure do |c|
  c.configure_rspec_metadata!
end

This saves cassettes here:

spec/cassettes/
  <group>/
    <example>.yml

Custom hook

If you need more control, you can define the vcr: true hook yourself:

# spec/support/vcr.rb
VCR.configure do |c|
  c.cassette_library_dir = Rails.root.join("spec", "vcr")
  c.hook_into :webmock
end

RSpec.configure do |c|
  c.around(:each, :vcr) do |example|
    name = example.metadata[:full_description].split(/\s+/, 2).join("/").underscore.gsub(/[^\w\/]+/, "_")
    options = example.metadata.slice(:record, :match_requests_on).except(:example_group)
    VCR.use_cassette(name, options) { example.call }
  end
end

This saves cassettes here:

spec/vcr/
  <model_name>/
    <file_name>_<describe_title>/
      <it_title>.yml

Behaviour