shoulda

The shoulda gem is a meta gem with two dependencies:

Official documentation for each gem:

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 do
gem ‘rspec-rails’
gem ‘shoulda-matchers’
end

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

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

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.