RSpec is a tool produced with the intent of making use case testing simpler in Ruby. Traditional Ruby on Rails unit testing can become complicated and hard to manage when working with a large project. The harder the testing becomes, the more time that unit testing consumes. With RSpec, however, testing scenarios are put in simpler terms and the Ruby code to do the test is generated automatically. This can do wonders to simplify unit testing.
The behavioral style testing revolves around an RSpec Story. Instead of directly coding a unit test, programmers instead write an RSpec Story. The Story appears much as a documented use case would, with actors and actions defined in a formal language. This formal language relies on plain text constructs to provide cues for the generation of Ruby code. The formal constructs include logical operators such as “Given”, “When”, “Then”, as well as “And.”
Scenarios written in plain text are scanned for logical operators and objects, then subsequently converted into testable Ruby code. The RSpec engine reads scenarios line by line, making it easy to reuse individual components of a test. The simple text format of the test cases makes it easy to write new tests and modify old ones. The format is simple enough to also allow non-programmers to create tests.
RSpec does not provide a graphical interface, but nonetheless can save tremendous time in writing test scenarios. The Story Framework is an intuitive way to create full fledged tests without having to invest the time necessary for coding. With a standardized format, RSpec also makes it easier to maintain code. Ruby code is less likely to become messy and difficult to understand as it might with regular unit testing.