What am I doing wrong in Shoulda Matchers? - ruby-on-rails

Question

In gem file I write this:
group :test do
gem 'rspec-rails'
gem 'shoulda-matchers', require: false
gem 'factory_girl'
end
My rails_helper
require 'rspec/rails'
require 'shoulda/matchers'
My spec_helper
require 'rails_helper'
RSpec.configure do |config|
config.expect_with :rspec do |expectations|
expectations.include_chain_clauses_in_custom_matcher_descriptions = true
end
config.include FactoryGirl::Syntax::Methods
config.mock_with :rspec do |mocks|
mocks.verify_partial_doubles = true
end
Shoulda::Matchers.configure do |config|
config.integrate do |with|
# Choose a test framework:
with.test_framework :rspec
# Choose one or more libraries:
with.library :active_record
with.library :active_model
with.library :action_controller
end
end
And finally my test:
require 'spec_helper'
describe Person do
it {should validate_presence_of(:identifier)}
end
And I get nomethoderror
Failure/Error: it {should validate_presence_of(:identifier)}
NoMethodError:
undefined method `validate_presence_of' for #<RSpec::ExampleGroups::Person:0x007fe58d13ca20>
I simply don't get it. In other project the same way works. Here it doesn't. I have spent two days to fix this problem. Are there better alternatives of Shoulda Matchers in rails?

Answer 1

Sorry you're having trouble. You need to load Rails before you require shoulda-matchers. The gem will only make model matchers available if it can see that ActiveRecord is available; if not, then you won't get them.
It appears that you have rails_helper and spec_helper swapped. Typically in a fresh project with rspec-rails installed, rails_helper will load Rails and then require spec_helper. I would remove both files (or move them aside so you still have them) and then re-run rails g rspec:install to regenerate them. You'll still want to add the shoulda-matchers configuration block to rails_helper as you have done, but by that point ActiveRecord (and the rest of Rails) should be loaded.

Answer 2

Change your Gemfile to use two different groups for test like this:
group :test, :development do
gem 'rspec-rails'
gem 'factory_girl'
end
group :test do
gem 'shoulda-matchers', require: false
end
This used to be caused when shoulda would load with Test::Unit instead of RSpec, but I thought that was fixed.