before(:each) vs just before

Question

I am new to ruby on rails. And playing around with testing

Is there a difference between

before(:each) do 
  #some test code
end

and

before do
  #some test code
end

Answer 1

The before method accepts a scope parameter that defaults to :each. When you leave it out, it's implied that you mean :each, so your two examples do the exact same thing.

Here is a helpful tidbit from the RSpec RDoc, Module: RSpec::Core::Hooks#before:

Parameters:

• scope (Symbol) — :each, :all, or :suite (defaults to :each)
• conditions (Hash) — constrains this hook to examples matching these conditions e.g. before(:each, :ui => true) { ... } will only run with examples or groups declared with :ui => true.