How to run a single RSpec test?

Question

I have the following file:

/spec/controllers/groups_controller_spec.rb

What command in terminal do I use to run just that spec and in what directory do I run the command?

My gem file:

# Test ENVIRONMENT GEMS
group :development, :test do
    gem "autotest"
    gem "rspec-rails", "~> 2.4"
    gem "cucumber-rails", ">=0.3.2"
    gem "webrat", ">=0.7.2"
    gem 'factory_girl_rails'
    gem 'email_spec'
end

Spec file:

require 'spec_helper'

describe GroupsController do
  include Devise::TestHelpers

  describe "GET yourgroups" do
    it "should be successful and return 3 items" do

      Rails.logger.info 'HAIL MARRY'

      get :yourgroups, :format => :json
      response.should be_success
      body = JSON.parse(response.body)
      body.should have(3).items # @user1 has 3 permissions to 3 groups
    end
  end
end

Answer 1

Usually I do:

rspec ./spec/controllers/groups_controller_spec.rb:42

Where 42 represents the line of the test I want to run.

EDIT1:

You could also use tags. See here.

EDIT 2:

Try:

bundle exec rspec ./spec/controllers/groups_controller_spec.rb:42

Answer 2

You can pass a regex to the spec command which will only run it blocks matching the name you supply.

spec path/to/my_spec.rb -e "should be the correct answer"

Answer 3

With Rake:

rake spec SPEC=path/to/spec.rb

(Credit goes to this answer. Go vote him up.)

EDIT (thanks to @cirosantilli): To run one specific scenario within the spec, you have to supply a regex pattern match that matches the description.

rake spec SPEC=path/to/spec.rb \
          SPEC_OPTS="-e \"should be successful and return 3 items\""

Answer 4

For model, it will run case on line number 5 only

bundle exec rspec spec/models/user_spec.rb:5

For controller : it will run case on line number 5 only

bundle exec rspec spec/controllers/users_controller_spec.rb:5

For signal model or controller remove line number from above

To run case on all models

bundle exec rspec spec/models

To run case on all controller

bundle exec rspec spec/controllers

To run all cases

 bundle exec rspec 

Answer 5

My preferred method for running specific tests is slightly different - I added the lines

  RSpec.configure do |config|
    config.filter_run :focus => true
    config.run_all_when_everything_filtered = true
  end

To my spec_helper file.

Now, whenever I want to run one specific test (or context, or spec), I can simply add the tag "focus" to it, and run my test as normal - only the focused test(s) will run. If I remove all the focus tags, the run_all_when_everything_filtered kicks in and runs all the tests as normal.

It's not quite as quick and easy as the command line options - it does require you to edit the file for the test you want to run. But it gives you a lot more control, I feel.

Answer 6

@apneadiving answer is a neat way of solving this. However, now we have a new method in Rspec 3.3. We can simply run rspec spec/unit/baseball_spec.rb[#context:#it] instead of using a line number. Taken from here:

RSpec 3.3 introduces a new way to identify examples[...]

For example, this command:

$ rspec spec/unit/baseball_spec.rb[1:2,1:4] …would run the 2nd and 4th example or group defined under the 1st top-level group defined in spec/unit/baseball_spec.rb.

So instead of doing rspec spec/unit/baseball_spec.rb:42 where it (test in line 42) is the first test, we can simply do rspec spec/unit/baseball_spec.rb[1:1] or rspec spec/unit/baseball_spec.rb[1:1:1] depending on how nested the test case is.