Rspec before blocks

Ruby on Rails
1

Any opinions which of these is better to test some query methods? I’ve been experimenting with removing the use of before, but I think in the case below, the scoped before(:all) works very well. Note, these tests are inside of an enclosing rspec describe User do block.

Standard rspec way with many it blocks. While less concise, the context blocks explain what is being tested.

  describe "find methods" do
    before(:all) do # before :all only runs once in the right context
      @user1 = create :user, email: "something@email.com"
      @user2 = create :user, email: "jUnK@email.com"
      @user3 = create :user, email: "jUnKy@email.com"
      @user4 = create :user, email: "foo@bar.com"
    end

    describe "#by_email" do
      context "no match" do
        it "finds nothing" do
          expect(User.by_email("JUNK")).to be_nil
        end
      end

      context "exact match" do
        it "finds user" do
          expect(User.by_email(@user2.email)).to eq(@user2)
        end
      end

      context "upcase with spaces" do
        it "finds user" do
          expect(User.by_email(" #{@user2.email.upcase} ")).to eq(@user2)
        end
      end
    end

    describe "#by_email_wildcard" do
      context "no matches" do
        it "finds no users" do
          users = User.by_email_wildcard("nothing")
          expect(users.size).to eq(0)
        end
      end
      context "exact match" do
        it "finds users" do
          users = User.by_email_wildcard(@user1.email.upcase)
          expect(users.size).to eq(1)
          expect(users.first).to eq(@user1)
        end
      end
      context "2 matches" do
        it "finds 2 users" do
          users = User.by_email_wildcard('jun')
          expect(users.size).to eq(2)
        end
      end
    end
  end

Single it block, with single setup

  describe "find methods" do
    def setup_users
      @user1 = create :user, email: "something@email.com"
      @user2 = create :user, email: "jUnK@email.com"
      @user3 = create :user, email: "jUnKy@email.com"
      @user4 = create :user, email: "foo@bar.com"
    end

    it "finds" do
      setup_users

      expect(User.by_email("JUNK")).to be_nil
      expect(User.by_email(@user2.email)).to eq(@user2)
      expect(User.by_email(" #{@user2.email.upcase} ")).to eq(@user2)
      expect(User.by_email_wildcard("nothing").size).to eq(0)

      users = User.by_email_wildcard(@user1.email.upcase)
      expect(users.size).to eq(1)
      expect(users.first).to eq(@user1)

      expect(User.by_email_wildcard('jun').size).to eq(2)
    end
  end