Shoulda, RSpec, shoulda-matchers and models validations unit testing

Rails
1

I was trying out RSpec framework in a project and got stopped doing the
unit
test of a model. In particular, doing the test for the associations and
the
ActiveRecord validations.
I started writing the validations but my tests didn’t look DRY at all.
Before refactoring the tests checked out and look for other people
solutions.
I found out shoulda-matchers and Shoulda (which is I didn’t get it wrong
is
another testing framework). Actually I found another one, remarkable,
but it
look it doesn’t work with Rails 3.

Does anyone have any advice, comments, suggestion on this matter?

Right now I continue on using RSpec and shoulda-matchers. The last one
mainly for testing the validations and associations of the models.
Any advice and/or help will be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

2

You can see how the Rails 3 Tutorial tests validations. Start reading
at section 6.2:

http://ruby.railstutorial.org/chapters/modeling-and-viewing-users-one#sec:user_model

3

Already got something like that. The main difference, is that I’m using
factories.
The problem with my test, which almost follow those examples, is that
I’m
repeating myself each time I want to validate the same (uniqueness,
length,
etc).
One option is to create methods for each type of validation and that way
the
test will be DRY. Instead of that I was looking if there is a gem that
provide me with those (keep them updated, etc).
At that point is when I found shoulda-matchers.

Otherwise this is an example of how the test looks

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
…
validates :first_name,
:presence => true,
:length => { :maximum => 32 }
validates :last_name,
:presence => true,
:length => { :maximum => 32 }
…
end

According to the examples your tests for those fields should been:

describe User do

before(:each) do
@attr = { :first_name => “Foo”, :last_name => “Bar” }
end
…
it “should require a first name” do
no_email_user = User.new(@attr.merge(:first_name => “”))
no_email_user.should_not be_valid
end

it “should require a last name” do
no_email_user = User.new(@attr.merge(:last_name => “”))
no_email_user.should_not be_valid
end

it “should reject first names that are too long” do
long_first_name = “a” * 33
long_first_name_user = User.new(@attr.merge(:first_name =>
long_first_name))
long_first_name_user.should_not be_valid
end

it “should reject last names that are too long” do
long_last_name = “a” * 33
long_last_name_user = User.new(@attr.merge(:last_name =>
long_last_name))
long_last_name_user.should_not be_valid
end
end