Testing - Learning Chef - page 367

Test Automation with ChefSpec
Another great tool that can help you run tests early in your development cycle is ChefSpec .
You can even use it to catch errors before you code. ChefSpec can be used to produce run-
nable documentation . Its primary purpose is to help document and organize your code.
As a side benefit, ChefSpec tests and checks can uncover bugs when you make changes.
Plus, your Chef code will be improved when it is guided by tests.
Similar to Serverspec, ChefSpec builds on RSpec. ChefSpec uses the RSpec description form
to create runnable documentation. The form for ChefSpec documentation is slightly different
from Serverspec's, resembling the following:
describe '<recipe_name>' do
<perform in-memory Chef run>
<examples here>
end
For example, you would use the following describe block to contain examples performing
tests against the apache-test::default cookbook:
describe 'apache-test::default' do
...
end
To perform an in-memory Chef run, you would add the following statements to the basic de-
scribe form, using classes and methods from the chefspec gem. In this example, to test the
apache-test::default cookbook, you would use the following code:
require 'chefspec'
describe 'apache::default' do
chef_run = ChefSpec::Runner.new.converge('apache-test::default')
<descriptions here>
end
ChefSpec uses an expect form similar to Serverspec's. There are just different commands
and matchers for ChefSpec. Following is a ChefSpec example that checks to make sure there
is a reference in your Chef code to install the httpd package: