Using shoulda to refactor rspec tests on Rails models

Question

After learning about shoulda-matchers by answering another StackOverflow question on attribute accessibility tests (and thinking they were pretty awesome), I decided to try refa

Answer 1

I've found some value in writing tests for the presence of database columns. Here's why:

1) Writing them keeps me in the rhythm of TDD.
2) Migrations are usually pretty awesome, until they aren't. I know you're not supposed to edit an existing migration, but when I'm just working on something myself I sometimes do it anyway. And if someone else is working on the same application and changes an existing migration instead of writing a new one, these tests have isolated the problem pretty quickly for me.

If you get bogged down with too many column names & types you can do something like this to save yourself typing:

describe User do

  describe 'database' do 

    describe 'columns' do 

      %w[reset_password_sent_at remember_created_at current_sign_in_at 
        last_sign_in_at confirmed_at confirmation_sent_at 
        created_at updated_at
        ].each do |column|
        it { should have_db_column(column.to_sym).of_type(:datetime) }
      end
    end

    describe 'indexes' do 

      %w[confirmation_token email reset_password_token
      ].each do |index|
        it { should have_db_index(index.to_sym).unique(true)}
      end
    end
  end  
end

Hope that helps.