CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rubyrspec
Richard
Richard

Reputation: 2355

Set order of RSpec tests

I'm building a test suite to teach OOP. I want the files in my spec/lib folder to be executed in a specific order.

I would like to define an array of class names, and their test suite would be executed in order. For example:

spec_order = %w(
  FirstClass
  SecondClass
  ThirdClass
)

How might I accomplish this?

Upvotes: 9

Views: 7815

Answers (3)

pdg137
pdg137

Reputation: 3761

Of course it's good practice to have randomization by default, but in some cases, such as when trying to track down order-related issues in your specs, or for documentation generation, it might be nice to specify a temporary order.

You can specify a "global" ordering for some (or all) of your spec files as follows:

config.register_ordering(:global) do |items|
  files = <<END.split("\n")
./spec/some_spec.rb
./spec/another_spec.rb
END
  # Original RSpec random order
  randomized = RSpec::Core::Ordering::Random.new(config).order(items)

  # Now do a stable sort by filename index
  randomized.sort_by.with_index do |example_group, index|
    files.index(example_group.file_path) || files.size + index
  end
end

Documentation for register_ordering is available on Relish.

Upvotes: 1

Richard
Richard

Reputation: 2355

Name the _spec.rb files numerically:

01_first_spec.rb
02_second_spec.rb
...

Create a .rspec file

# .rspec

--order defined

Now, when running rspec the files should be executed in sorted order.

Upvotes: 11

moeabdol
moeabdol

Reputation: 5049

Ordering tests is not recommended by almost all testing frameworks. That is part of making sure that tests are independent and don't yield unexpected behavior when order changes.

However, if you want to run test files in specific order then you can accomplish that by writing scripts:

1. Shell Script

Consider the following script (ordered_test_script.sh):

for f in file1_spec.rb file2_spec.rb file3_spec.rb
do
  rspec $f
done

Make sure the script is executable:

chmod +x ordered_test_script.sh

Then you can run the script:

./ordered_test_script.sh

2. Ruby Script

First, you might want to extend the String class to include an underscore method:

class String
  def underscore
    self.gsub(/::/, '/').
    gsub(/([A-Z]+)([A-Z][a-z])/,'\1_\2').
    gsub(/([a-z\d])([A-Z])/,'\1_\2').
    tr("-", "_").
    downcase
  end
end

This will turn camelcase class names to underscore ones. For example (MyClass => my_class)

classes = %w(MyClass1 MyClass2 MyClass3)

classes.each do |c|
  system("rspec #{c.to_s.underscore}_spec.rb")
end

Hope this helps.

Upvotes: 2

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