Rspec Core

Rspec is an automated testing framework for Ruby, designed for use in Behaviour Driven Development and Test Driven Development.

rspec-core includes the Rspec runner, output formatters, and the rspec command.

Install

[sudo] gem install rspec --prerelease

This will install the rspec, rspec-core, rspec-expectations and rspec-mocks gems.

Get Started

Start with a simple example of behavior you expect from your system. Do this before you write any code:

# in spec/calculator_spec.rb
describe Calculator, "add" do
  it "returns the sum of its arguments" do
    Calculator.new.add(1, 2).should eq(3)
  end
end

Run this with the rspec command, and watch it fail:

$ rspec spec/calculator_spec.rb
./spec/calculator_spec.rb:1: uninitialized constant Calculator

Implement the simplest solution:

# in lib/calculator.rb
class Calculator
  def add(a,b)
    a + b
  end
end

Be sure to require the implementation file in the spec:

# in spec/calculator_spec.rb
# - Rspec adds ./lib to the $LOAD_PATH, so you can
#   just require "calculator" directly
require "calculator"

Now run the spec again, and watch it pass:

$ rspec spec/calculator_spec.rb
.

Finished in 0.000315 seconds
1 example, 0 failures

Use the documentation formatter to see the resulting spec:

$ rspec spec/calculator_spec.rb --format doc
Calculator add
  returns the sum of its arguments

Finished in 0.000379 seconds
1 example, 0 failures

Configuration

You can define runtime configuration options in four places. They are loaded and processed in this order:

• ~/.rspec
• .rspec
• RSpec.configure
• command line

Run rspec --help to see supported configuration options.

Also see

• http://github.com/rspec/rspec
• http://github.com/rspec/rspec-expectations
• http://github.com/rspec/rspec-mocks
• http://github.com/rspec/rspec-dev