01 Nov 2020

RSpec terminology: Examples and Example groups

Whenever we discuss RSpec, we often use the terms “examples” and “example groups”. They might be evident for a developer using RSpec but in the beginning of my career, it was not very evident to me. So, I summarised what I learnt about them in this article.

Examples

The it blocks in your spec file are referred to examples. Imagine these as testing the example behaviour of an object. For example:

RSpec.describe Account do
  describe "#full_name" do
    let(:account) { Accout.new(first_name: "John", last_name: "Doe") }

    it "combines +first_name+ and +last_name+" do
      expect(account.full_name).to eq("John Doe")
    end
  end
end

Here, we are testing an example behaviour of the Account object’s full_name method. Therefore, “combines +first_name+ and +last_name+” is an example.

Example groups

The usage of describe and context creates example groups. Example groups (or simply referred as groups), are simply a way to organise and group the examples. These provide meaning and context to the example so that it’s easier for the developer or the reader of the tests to understand the specs better.

RSpec.describe "example group 1" do
  describe "nested group 1" do
    it "example 1" do
      ...
    end
    it "example 2" do
      ...
    end
  end
  describe "nested group 2" do
    it "example 1" do
      ...
    end
  end
end

This is all for this post. Hope this clarified the terminology for you.