Before and After hooks for a spec directory in RSpec

Question

We have quite a bit of tests in our RSpec test suite. directory structure looks something like -

spec/
  truncation/
    example1_spec.rb
    example2_spec.rb
    ...
  transaction/
    example1_spec.rb
    example2_spec.rb
    ...

I wanted to restore a test database dump, before all of the spec files in transaction/ folder are run and empty it after all tests finish.

Is there a way to do this?

There are before(:suite) and after(:suite) hooks but these work for individual spec files.

Is there a way to provide before and after hooks for directories in RSpec?

Answer 1

Are you using RSpec 3+?

You can use #define_derived_metadata to add custom metadata based on file path matchers.

RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.define_derived_metadata(file_path: %r{spec/truncation}) do |metadata|
    metadata[:truncation] = true
  end

  config.before(:all, :truncation) do
    # truncate that bad boy
  end
end

This is the same method used in rspec-rails to add custom behavior to specs in the specific directories, e.g. spec/controllers.

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