Rspec Spec Refactoring

Question

I am trying to clear my specifications as they become extremely repetitive.

I have the following specification

  describe "Countries API" do 
    it "should render a country list" do
      co1 = Factory(:country)
      co2 = Factory(:country)
      result = invoke :GetCountryList, "empty_auth"

      result.should be_an_instance_of(Api::GetCountryListReply)
      result.status.should be_an_instance_of(Api::SoapStatus)
      result.status.code.should eql 0
      result.status.errors.should be_an_instance_of Array
      result.status.errors.length.should eql 0
      result.country_list.should be_an_instance_of Array
      result.country_list.first.should be_an_instance_of(Api::Country)
      result.country_list.should have(2).items
    end
    it_should_behave_like "All Web Services"
    it "should render a non-zero status for an invalid request"
  end

A block of code that checks the status will appear in all my specifications for API 50-60. My first thought was to port this to a method and that refactoring certainly makes things a lot drier: -

def status_should_be_valid(status)
    status.should be_an_instance_of(Api::SoapStatus)
    status.code.should eql 0
    status.errors.should be_an_instance_of Array
    status.errors.length.should eql 0
end

describe "Countries API" do 
    it "should render a country list" do
      co1 = Factory(:country)
      co2 = Factory(:country)
      result = invoke :GetCountryList, "empty_auth"

      result.should be_an_instance_of(Api::GetCountryListReply)
      status_should_be_valid(result.status)
      result.country_list.should be_an_instance_of Array
      result.country_list.first.should be_an_instance_of(Api::Country)
      result.country_list.should have(2).items
    end
  end

This works, but I cannot help but feel that this is not the “right” way to do it, and I have to use general specifications, however, looking at the method for defining general specifications, I cannot easily see how I will refactor this example of using a common specifications.

How can I do this using common specifications and without having to restart a relatively expensive unit at the beginning, namely

  co1 = Factory(:country)
  co2 = Factory(:country)
  result = invoke :GetCountryList, "empty_auth"

Answer 1

, new-ish "subject" RSpec. , before :all , "". , - , "" ( , ).

shared_examples_for "valid status" do
  it { should be_an_instance_of(Api::SoapStatus) }
  its(:code) { should eql(0) }
  its(:errors) { should be_an_instance_of(Array) }
  its(:errors) { should be_empty }
end

describe "Countries API" do
  before :all do
    co1 = Factory(:country)
    co2 = Factory(:country)
    @result = invoke :GetCountryList, "empty_auth"
  end

  subject { @result }
  it { should be_an_instance_of(Api::GetCountryListReply) }
  its(:country_list) { should be_an_instance_of (Array) }
  it "should have countries in the country list" do
    @result.country_list.each {|c| c.should be_an_instance_of(Api::Country)}
  end
  its(:country_list) { should have(2).items }

  describe "result status" do
    subject { @result.status }
    it_should_behave_like "valid status"
  end
end