Nyan Cat RSpec Formatter

November 16, 2011

I watch a lot of tests run in a given day. So I figured why not make it more fun. Inspired by minitest’s pride, and um cats? I came up with a Nyan Cat inspired RSpec formatter.

Update: After last week’s launch, Nyan Cat received a great response from the Ruby world. Over the weekend, I released version 0.0.2. It includes a few bug fixes and some really cool enhancements. Most notably, Nyan Cat now spans multiple lines. In addition, it displays running totals of passing, pending, and failed specs. Thanks to everyone who contributed! Checkout the new screencast below.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_,------,
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-|   /\_/\
-_-_-_-_-_-_-~|__( ^ .^)
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-""  ""

Nyan Cat

Much like Nyan, Nyan Cat simply creates a rainbow trail of test results. It counts the number of examples as they execute and highlights failed and pending specs. The rainbow changes colors as it runs and if all the specs pass, Nyan Cat falls asleep. If there are any pending or failing specs, Nyan cat is concerned and can’t sleep.

Here’s a short demo of Nyan Cat in action.

Installing Nyan Cat is easy. Just install the gem nyan-cat-formatter and simply put the options in your .rspec file:

--format NyanCatFormatter

Checkout the code on Github and let me know how you like it. If you run into any issues, please create an issue on Github and I will be sure to get it fixed. Of course you can always fork the project and send me a pull request.

Have fun!