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

starting with rspec 2 you can use the following:

# in spec/spec_helper.rb
RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.filter_run :focus => true
  config.run_all_when_everything_filtered = true
end

# in spec/any_spec.rb
describe "something" do
  it "does something", :focus => true do
    # ....
  end
end

Answer 2

I use this guard gem to auto-run my test. It execute test after create or update operations on test file.

https://github.com/guard/guard-test

or usually you can run using following command

rspec spec/controllers/groups_controller_spec.rb

Answer 3

In rails 5,

I used this way to run single test file(all the tests in one file)

rails test -n /TopicsControllerTest/ -v

Class name can be used to match to the desired file TopicsControllerTest

My class class TopicsControllerTest < ActionDispatch::IntegrationTest

Output :

If You want you can tweak the regex to match to single test method \TopicsControllerTest#test_Should_delete\

rails test -n /TopicsControllerTest#test_Should_delete/ -v

Answer 4

There are many options:

rspec spec                           # All specs
rspec spec/models                    # All specs in the models directory
rspec spec/models/a_model_spec.rb    # All specs in the some_model model spec
rspec spec/models/a_model_spec.rb:nn # Run the spec that includes line 'nn'
rspec -e"text from a test"           # Runs specs that match the text
rspec spec --tag focus               # Runs specs that have :focus => true
rspec spec --tag focus:special       # Run specs that have :focus => special
rspec spec --tag focus ~skip         # Run tests except those with :focus => true

Answer 5

You can do something like this:

 rspec/spec/features/controller/spec_file_name.rb
 rspec/spec/features/controller_name.rb         #run all the specs in this controller

Answer 6

Given you're on a rails 3 project with rspec 2, From the rails root directory:

  bundle exec rspec spec/controllers/groups_controller_spec.rb 

should definitely work. i got tired of typing that so i created an alias to shorten 'bundle exec rspec' to 'bersp'

'bundle exec' is so that it loads the exact gem environment specified in your gem file: http://gembundler.com/

Rspec2 switched from the 'spec' command to the 'rspec' command.