assert_difference

A nice assert_difference method similar to the one provided by Rails but with some improvements. For example:

assert_difference "Company.count" => 1, "User.count" => 5, "Slot.count" => -1 do
  post :something
end

will assert that a company and 5 users were create (the plus sign is only for the visual aid) and a slot was removed.

Rails' assert_difference would require a more verbose syntax:

assert_difference "Company.count" do
  assert_difference "User.count", 5 do
    assert_difference "Article.count", -1 do
      post :something
    end
  end
end

Expectations can also be ranges, for example:

assert_difference "Blog.count" => 1, "Post.count" => 2..5 do # Generate some sample posts when creating a blog
  post :create
end

On top of that, error reporting is improved by displaying all the counters that didn't match.

To use it with Test::Unit add this code:

class Test::Unit::TestCase
  include AssertDifference
end

or in Rails:

class ActiveSupport::TestCase
  # ...
  include AssertDifference
end

and to use it with RSpec:

RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.include AssertDifference
end

Support

This gem requires activesupport >= 3.0.0. It is currently being tested against Ruby 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5 with Rails 4.2, 5.0, 5.1 and 5.2, but it's likely to work fine with earlier and later versions of both Ruby and Rails (hence the very permissive dependency on activesupport).

Up to version ~> 1.0.0 of this gem, it was tested with active support 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 4.0 and 4.1 as well as Ruby 1.9.3, 2.0 and 2.1.

Users

This gem is being used by:

Watu
Dashman
You? please, let us know if you are using this gem.

Changelog

Version 1.0.0 (Nov 14, 2014)

Modernization of the gem.
Test with 100% code coverage.
Started using Travis-CI for continuous testing.
Started testing in various versions of active support and ruby.
Improved documentation.

Version 0.5.0 (Aug 6, 2012)

Expectations can be ranges.

Version 0.4.2 (Aug 6, 2012)

Fixed important typo.

Version 0.4.1 (Aug 6, 2012)

Better error reporting (all unmatching counters).

Version 0.4.0 (Feb 21, 2012)

Fix crash on missing gems.
Return what the blocks returns.

Version 0.3.1 (Aug 25, 2011)

Fixed documentation.

Version 0.3.0 (Aug 24, 2011)

Better organization of code with modules.
Switched to bundler from jeweler.
Removed unneeded dependencies.
Cleaned up documentation.

Version 0.1.0 (Oct 2, 2010)

Initial release. Code extracted from a personal project.

Contributing

Fork it
Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
Commit your changes (git commit -am "Add some feature")
Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
Create new Pull Request