shoulda

The shoulda gem is a meta gem with two dependencies:

• shoulda-context (official documentation)
• shoulda-matchers (official documentation)

The following describes different use cases and combinations.

rspec with shoulda-matchers

This is what thoughtbot currently does. We write tests like:

describe Post do
  it { should belong_to(:user) }
  it { should validate_presence_of(:title) }
end

The belong_to and validate_presence_of methods are the matchers. All matchers are Rails 3-specific.

Add rspec-rails and shoulda-matchers to the project's Gemfile:

group :test, :development do
  gem 'rspec-rails'
  gem 'shoulda-matchers'
end

test/unit with shoulda

For the folks who prefer Test::Unit, they'd write tests like:

class UserTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  should have_many(:posts)
  should_not allow_value("blah").for(:email)
end

The have_many and allow_value methods are the same kind of matchers seen in the RSpec example. They come from the shoulda-matchers gem.

Add shoulda to the project's Gemfile:

group :test do
  gem 'shoulda'
end

test/unit with shoulda-context

If you're not testing a Rails project or don't want to use the matchers, you can use shoulda-context independently to write tests like:

class CalculatorTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  context "a calculator" do
    setup do
      @calculator = Calculator.new
    end

    should "add two numbers for the sum" do
      assert_equal 4, @calculator.sum(2, 2)
    end

    should "multiply two numbers for the product" do
      assert_equal 10, @calculator.product(2, 5)
    end
  end
end

Add shoulda-context to the project's Gemfile:

group :test do
  gem 'shoulda-context'
end

Credits

Shoulda is maintained and funded by thoughtbot, inc

Thank you to all the contributors!

The names and logos for thoughtbot are trademarks of thoughtbot, inc.

License

Shoulda is Copyright © 2006-2013 Tammer Saleh and thoughtbot, inc. It is free software, and may be redistributed under the terms specified in the MIT-LICENSE file.