Project: RSpec Rails 2.2

Publisher: RSpec

RSpec Rails 2.2

rspec-rails extends Rails' built-in testing framework to support rspec examples
for requests, controllers, models, views, and helpers.

Rails-3

rspec-rails-2 supports rails-3.0.0 and later. For earlier versions of Rails,
you need rspec-rails-1.3.

Install

gem install rspec-rails

This installs the following gems:

rspec
rspec-core
rspec-expectations
rspec-mocks
rspec-rails

Configure:

Add rspec-rails to the :test and :development groups in the Gemfile:

group :test, :development do
  gem "rspec-rails", "~> 2.0.1"
end

It needs to be in the :development group to expose generators and rake
tasks without having to type RAILS_ENV=test.

Now you can run:

script/rails generate rspec:install

This adds the spec directory and some skeleton files, including
the "rake spec" task.

Generators

If you type script/rails generate, the only RSpec generator you'll actually
see is rspec:install. That's because RSpec is registered with Rails as the
test framework, so whenever you generate application components like models,
controllers, etc, RSpec specs are generated instead of Test::Unit tests.

Note that the generators are there to help you get started, but they are no
substitute for writing your own examples, and they are only guaranteed to work
out of the box for the default scenario (ActiveRecord + Webrat).

Autotest

The rspec:install generator creates an ./autotest/discover.rb file, which
tells Autotest that you're using RSpec and Rails. You'll also need to add the
autotest (not autotest-rails) gem to your Gemfile:

gem "autotest"

At this point, if all of the gems in your Gemfile are installed in system
gems, you can just type autotest. If, however, Bundler is managing any gems
for you directly (i.e. you've got :git or :path attributes in the Gemfile),
you'll need to run bundle exec autotest.

Webrat and Capybara

You can choose between webrat or capybara for simulating a browser, automating
a browser, or setting expectations using the matchers they supply. Just add
your preference to the Gemfile:

gem "webrat"
gem "capybara"

Note that Capybara matchers are not available in view or helper specs.

Issues

The documentation for rspec-rails is a work in progress. We'll be adding
Cucumber features over time, and clarifying existing ones. If you have
specific features you'd like to see added, find the existing documentation
incomplete or confusing, or, better yet, wish to write a missing Cucumber
feature yourself, please submit an issue or a pull request.

Topics

Last published almost 7 years ago by dchelimsky.