yarjuf

Yet Another RSpec JUnit Formatter

Intro

I've never found a gem that can be relied on to generate JUnit output from RSpec. Previously, I'd cobbled together a formatter that worked for me for a couple of years and seems to have proved useful to others. But it was a hack and thought I'd rewrite it, make it conform to the JUnit format spec a bit better, and make it distributable as a gem. Thus: yet-another-rspec-junit-formatter

Installation

Using rubygems:

gem install yarjuf

Using bundler:

Add the following line to your Gemfile:

gem 'yarjuf'

Usage

There are a few ways to use custom formatters in RSpec; what follows is the 'best' way...

Loading yarjuf

Before you can use yarjuf, RSpec needs to know about it. The best way to do that is to use the functionality that RSpec provides to load libraries.

Modifying the .rspec file

When RSpec executes, it looks for a file in the current working directory (project root) called .rspec that contains rspec configuration. It is a good idea to add the following to it:

--require spec_helper

Doing so will make sure that the spec/spec_helper.rb file will get required when RSpec starts.

Modifying the spec/spec_helper.rb file

Add the following to your spec/spec_helper.rb:

require 'yarjuf'

That will make sure that yarjuf is loaded when RSpec starts and can be used as a formatter.

Generating JUnit output using yarjuf

RSpec tests can be executed in a number of ways. Here's how to get JUnit output for each of those different ways - assuming you've loaded yarjuf as specified above).

Running rspec tests from the command line

In this scenario, you just want to run rspec from the command line and get JUnit output. To do that you'll need to use the -f JUnit option to generate JUnit output and to write it to a file you can use the -o results.xml option. So to run all your tests and get JUnit output written to a file, execute the following:

rspec -f JUnit -o results.xml

Running rspec tests using Rake

In this scenario, you want to run your rspec tests using rake. To do that you'll need to add an option to your rake task:

RSpec::Core::RakeTask.new(:spec) do |t|
  t.rspec_opts = %w[-f JUnit -o results.xml]
end

That will write out JUnit formatted results to a file called results.xml.

Jenkins integration

To use yarjuf with Jenkins(/Hudson), simply tick the 'Publish JUnit test result report' option in the Jenkins task configuration page and in the 'Test report XMLs' field specify the file name that you expect the JUnit formatted results to be written to, ie: the file path and name specified in the -o option above.

Acknowledgements

• Thanks to @bsnape for the rspec 3 compatibility patch
• Thanks to @adeoke for suggesting a slightly less sucky gem name than the one I originally came up with
• Thanks to @dchamb84 for helping me debug the original hack
• Thanks to @nathanbain for spurring me on to write the original hack