Shoulda - Making tests easy on the fingers and eyes¶ ↑

Shoulda makes it easy to write elegant, understandable, and maintainable tests. Shoulda consists of matchers, test helpers, and assertions. It’s fully compatible with your existing tests in Test::Unit or RSpec, and requires no retooling to use.

Matchers

Test::Unit- and RSpec-compatible one-liners that test common Rails functionality. These tests would otherwise be much longer, more complex, and error-prone.

Helpers

#context and #should give you RSpec like test blocks in Test::Unit. In addition, you get nested contexts and a much more readable syntax.

Assertions

Many common Rails testing idioms have been distilled into a set of useful assertions.

Usage¶ ↑

ActiveRecord Tests (Shoulda::ActiveRecord::Matchers)¶ ↑

Test your ActiveRecord associations and validations with these powerful matchers:

class PostTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  should belong_to(:user)
  should have_many(:tags).through(:taggings)

  should validate_uniqueness_of(:title)
  should validate_presence_of(:body).with_message(/wtf/)
  should validate_presence_of(:title)
  should validate_numericality_of(:user_id)
end

class UserTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  should have_many(:posts)

  should_not allow_value("blah").for(:email)
  should_not allow_value("b lah").for(:email)
  should allow_value("[email protected]").for(:email)
  should allow_value("[email protected]").for(:email)
  should ensure_inclusion_of(:email).in_range(1..100)
  should ensure_inclusion_of(:age).in_range(1..100)
  should_not allow_mass_assignment_of(:password)
end

Makes TDD so much easier.

Controller Tests (Shoulda::Controller::Matchers)¶ ↑

Matchers to test the most common controller patterns…

class PostsControllerTest < ActionController::TestCase
  context "on GET to :show for first record" do
    setup do
      get :show, :id => 1
    end

    should assign_to(:user)
    should respond_with(:success)
    should render_template(:show)
    should_not set_the_flash

    should "do something else really cool" do
      assert_equal 1, assigns(:user).id
    end
  end
end

Context Helpers (Shoulda::Context)¶ ↑

Stop killing your fingers with all of those underscores… Name your tests with plain sentences!

class UserTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  context "A User instance" do
    setup do
      @user = User.find(:first)
    end

    should "return its full name" do
      assert_equal 'John Doe', @user.full_name
    end

    context "with a profile" do
      setup do
        @user.profile = Profile.find(:first)
      end

      should "return true when sent #has_profile?" do
        assert @user.has_profile?
      end
    end
  end
end

Produces the following test methods:

"test: A User instance should return its full name."
"test: A User instance with a profile should return true when sent #has_profile?."

So readable!

Helpful Assertions (Shoulda::Assertions)¶ ↑

More to come here, but have fun with what’s there.

assert_same_elements([:a, :b, :c], [:c, :a, :b])
assert_contains(['a', '1'], /\d/)
assert_contains(['a', '1'], 'a')

Rails Installation (Test::Unit)¶ ↑

Specify the gem dependency in your config/environment.rb file:

Rails::Initializer.run do |config|
  config.gem "shoulda", :lib => "shoulda"
end

Then:

$ rake gems:install
$ rake gems:unpack

Rails Installation (RSpec)¶ ↑

If you’re using Shoulda with RSpec, we recommend that you add config.gem lines for RSpec and Shoulda in your config/environment/test.rb file, but do not ask Rails to load the RSpec and Shoulda libraries:

config.gem 'rspec',       :lib => false
config.gem 'rspec-rails', :lib => false
config.gem 'shoulda',     :lib => false

Then require shoulda from your spec/spec_helper.rb file, before Spec::Runner is configured:

# requires for RSpec
require 'shoulda'
Spec::Runner.configure do |config|
# ...

You should not need to require anything besides the top-level shoulda library.

Rails 3 Installation (RSpec)¶ ↑

With Rails 3 and Bundler, requiring Shoulda is as easy as adding it to your Gemfile:

group :test do
  gem "shoulda"
  gem "rspec-rails", "2.0.0.beta.12"
end

Shoulda will automatically include matchers into the appropriate example groups.

Credits¶ ↑

Shoulda is maintained and funded by thoughtbot

License¶ ↑

Shoulda is Copyright © 2006-2010 Tammer Saleh, Thoughtbot. It is free software, and may be redistributed under the terms specified in the MIT-LICENSE file.