Question

I’m using rspec with ruby on rails for testing.

Question – In a spec if I was to do a cross check a pre-condition is established properly before starting the test, what approach is recommended?

For example, using an rspec “.should” type assertion doesn’t seem like this would be the right thing as I’m only checking a precondition…

Answer 1

A should is perfectly valid in this situation as it is a condition that should be valid at the start of the test. As a very trivial example:

it "should increment by one" do
  value = 10
  value.should eql(10)
  value += 1
  value.should eql(11)
end