What does the 'it' do?

Ruby
1

I came across the following code (see below). As President Clinton
famously said, “It depends on what the definition of ‘it’ is.” I am
hoping someone can explain how ‘it’ is being used. I have come across
this ‘it…string…do’ construct before, but I didn’t understand it
then either.

describe IowaRubyBrigade do
before do
@irb = Array.new
end

it “should be a user group” do
@irb.should be_a_kind_of(UserGroup)
end

it “should meet monthly” do
@irb.meeting_time.should ==
‘second Thursday of every month’
end

it “should be fun” do
@irb.should be_fun
end
end

When you ri it, you get:

Spec::Example::ExampleGroupMethods#it
it(description=nil, &implementation)

 Creates an instance of Spec::Example::Example and adds it to a
 collection of examples of the current example group.


 (also known as specify)

But the documentation on Spec is difficult to find. Please educate me.
Thanks,
Tim

2

On 28.09.2008 08:18, timr wrote:

@irb.should be_fun
 collection of examples of the current example group.


 (also known as specify)

But the documentation on Spec is difficult to find. Please educate me.
Thanks,
Tim

“it” is a method which apparently does what your RI doc says. Most
likely it saves the block somewhere for later execution (i.e. in order
to perform the test).

Fur further information you probably want to look at RSpec
documentation, e.g. RSpec documentation

Kind regards

robert

3

Last winter, I wrote a series of blog posts dissecting the rspec code to
see
what describe/it do, as well as what happens when the examples are run.
It
is from the perspective of a fairly new ruby person (as I was at the
time,
and, I guess, still am), but here’s links. I can’t say whether they will
help you, or not, since I mostly wrote them for myself:
describe
Part I -
http://www.coreyhaines.com/coreysramblings/2007/12/15/ARubyNewbieLooksThroughRSpecPartIIDescribe.aspx
Part II -
http://www.coreyhaines.com/coreysramblings/2007/12/22/ARubyNewbieLooksThroughRSpecPartIIIDescribeRedux.aspx

it
http://www.coreyhaines.com/coreysramblings/2007/12/27/ARubyNewbieLooksThroughRSpecPartIVIt.aspx

run
http://www.coreyhaines.com/coreysramblings/2007/12/27/ARubyNewbieLooksThroughRSpecPartIVRunI.aspx

Hope they can help explain it a bit.
-Corey

On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 4:54 AM, Robert K.

4

Just a follow-up; I started reading through them, and the Part I of
describe
is for an older version, so it can be skipped.