A guide for creating respec tests

Having completed a boot camp and now rebooting my learning with exercism I wanted to start creating my own tests for some “puzzle” ideas I want to develop. On the advise of a senior developer I created a tennis game and use rspec test to help drive this game development. Funny enough this is also a very topical sport to target with the Djokovic saga going on too..

Setting up a rspec test environment:

Create folders & implementation file

Open a terminal

 mkdir <game_name>
 mkdir <game_name>/lib
 cd <game_name>/lib
 touch game.rb

Creating the rspec environment

back in terminal

cd ..
code . #opens your project
bundle init

this will create a Gemfile

  • open Gemfile and modify
  • remove gem “rails” and change to gem “rspec”
bundle
rspec --init
touch spec/<game>_spec.rb

Now you have created a rspec test folder and test file <game_name>/spec/_spec.rb

Creating a rspec test:

Open the <game_name>/spec/_spec.rb file To have the spec file target the correct implementation file in this case the <game_name>.md place require ‘tennis’ at the top file

RSpec.describe <Game> do
  it "what does the implemntation" do
    expect(method).to eq "expected outcome"
  end
end

Two test examples for my tennis game when you want the scores to be Test 1: “Deuce” or Test 2: “Love all”

RSpec.describe Tennis do
  # Test 1
  it 'updates the score when server and receiver both win three points each' do
  tennis = Tennis.new
    # pending
    3.times{tennis.server_wins_point}
    3.times{tennis.receiver_wins_point}
    expect(tennis.score).to eq 'Deuce'
  end
  # Test 2
  it 'reports the starting score ' do
    tennis = Tennis.new
    expect(tennis.score).to eq 'love all'
  end
end

Running a rspec test:

back in terminal to run the rspec test:

rspec <game>_spec.rb

Passing and Failed Tests

Now that we have a test we can use the tests to drive our developer enironment we want to turn RED into GREEN

drawing
Green
Passed Tests		 RED
Failed test need some more work

Extra nice to know about a rspec tests:

  • eq means an equality match but there are others you can use in the rspec test .
  • note: method may need to be a class.method eg Tennis.score
  • use pending to skip a given test