Shoulda - Making tests easy on the fingers and eyes

Shoulda makes it easy to write elegant, understandable, and maintainable tests. Shoulda consists of test macros, assertions, and helpers added on to the Test::Unit framework. It’s fully compatible with your existing tests, and requires no retooling to use.

Usage

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!

ActiveRecord Tests (Shoulda::ActiveRecord::Macros)

Quick macro tests for your ActiveRecord associations and validations:

  class PostTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
    fixtures :all
    should_belong_to :user
    should_have_many :tags, :through => :taggings
    should_validate_uniqueness_of :title
    should_validate_presence_of :body, :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_values_for :email, "blah", "b lah"
    should_allow_values_for :email, "a@b.com", "asdf@asdf.com"
    should_ensure_length_in_range :email, 1..100
    should_ensure_value_in_range :age, 1..100
    should_not_allow_mass_assignment_of :password
  end

Makes TDD so much easier.

Controller Tests (Shoulda::Controller::Macros)

Macros to test the most common controller patterns…

  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

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')

3rd Party and Application Specific Macros

Any *.rb file under RAILS_ROOT/test/shoulda_macros/ or vendor/(plugins|gems)/gem_name/shoulda_macros/ will be automatically required when you run your tests. This allows you to distribute macros with your plugins, or to organize the macros inside your application. Remember to add your macro to Test::Unit::TestCase in the macro file:

  # test/shoulda_macros/security.rb
  class Test::Unit::TestCase
    def self.should_be_denied(opts = {})
      should_set_the_flash_to(opts[:flash] || /Please log in/i)
      should_redirect_to(opts[:redirect]   || 'login_url')
    end
  end

Rails Installation

As a Gem

Use this if you prefer to use versioned releases of shoulda. Specify the gem dependency in your config/environment.rb file:

  Rails::Initializer.run do |config|
    config.gem "thoughtbot-shoulda", :lib => "shoulda", :source => "https://gems.github.com"
  end

Then:

  $ rake gems:install
  $ rake gems:unpack

As a Plugin

Use this if you prefer to use the edge version of shoulda:

  $ script/plugin install git://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda.git

As a Plugin (using git submodules)

Use this if you prefer the idea of being able to easily switch between using edge or a tagged version of shoulda:

  $ git submodule add git://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda.git vendor/plugins/shoulda

Credits

Shoulda is maintained by Tammer Saleh, and is funded by Thoughtbot, inc.

License

Shoulda is Copyright © 2006-2008 Tammer Saleh, Thoughtbot. It is free software, and may be redistributed under the terms specified in the MIT-LICENSE file.