Execute Rspec from Ruby

Question

I am trying to execute rspec from ruby, and get the status or number of failures from a method or something like that. Actually I am running something like this:

system("rspec 'myfilepath'")

but I only can get the string returned by the function. Is there any way to do this directly using objects?

Answer 1

I think the best way would be using RSpec's configuration and Formatter. This would not involve parsing the IO stream, also gives much richer result customisation programmatically.

RSpec 2:

require 'rspec'

config = RSpec.configuration

# optionally set the console output to colourful
# equivalent to set --color in .rspec file
config.color = true

# using the output to create a formatter
# documentation formatter is one of the default rspec formatter options
json_formatter = RSpec::Core::Formatters::JsonFormatter.new(config.output)

# set up the reporter with this formatter
reporter =  RSpec::Core::Reporter.new(json_formatter)
config.instance_variable_set(:@reporter, reporter)

# run the test with rspec runner
# 'my_spec.rb' is the location of the spec file
RSpec::Core::Runner.run(['my_spec.rb'])

Now you can use the json_formatter object to get result and summary of a spec test.

# gets an array of examples executed in this test run
json_formatter.output_hash

An example of output_hash value can be found here:

RSpec 3

require 'rspec'
require 'rspec/core/formatters/json_formatter'

config = RSpec.configuration

formatter = RSpec::Core::Formatters::JsonFormatter.new(config.output_stream)

# create reporter with json formatter
reporter =  RSpec::Core::Reporter.new(config)
config.instance_variable_set(:@reporter, reporter)

# internal hack
# api may not be stable, make sure lock down Rspec version
loader = config.send(:formatter_loader)
notifications = loader.send(:notifications_for, RSpec::Core::Formatters::JsonFormatter)

reporter.register_listener(formatter, *notifications)

RSpec::Core::Runner.run(['spec.rb'])

# here's your json hash
p formatter.output_hash

Other Resources

• Detailed work through
• Gist example

Answer 2

I suggest you to take a look into rspec source code to find out the answer. I think you can start with example_group_runner

Edit: Ok here is the way:

RSpec::Core::Runner::run(options, err, out)

Options - array of directories, err & out - streams. For example

RSpec::Core::Runner.run(['spec', 'another_specs'], $stderr, $stdout)