--- title: Shoulda Matchers 2.8.0 teaser: An overview of changes in the latest release. tags: news,web,ruby,open source,testing,shoulda author: Elliot Winkler published_on: 2015-02-02 --- Our popular gem for helping you write succinct tests for your validations and associations, Shoulda Matchers, continues to improve with the release of 2.8.0. This is the last release in the 2.x line, and we'll be focusing on 3.0 next. We'll talk more about that in a future post, but for now, let's take a look at list of changes in this release. ## Deprecations We've been trying to align the matchers API more closely with APIs in Rails. In 2.7.0, we renamed `ensure_inclusion_of` to `validate_inclusion_of`, and `ensure_exclusion_of` to `validation_inclusion_of`. In 2.8.0 we've also renamed `ensure_length_of` to `validate_length_of`. You may continue to use the older names, but we'll be removing them in 3.0. In addition we've also made a few changes to `set_the_flash` and `set_session`. In Rails, `flash` and `session` have similar APIs, and so we are making their matcher counterparts similar, too. For this reason, we've renamed `set_the_flash` to `set_flash`, and we've also deprecated `set_session(:foo)` in favor of `set_session[:foo]`. These older usages will be removed in 3.0. Finally, to clean up the API, we are deprecating `should set_session[:key].to(nil)` to assert that a certain value in `session` is unset. You should change this syntax to `should_not set_session[:key]`, as we will be changing the former syntax so that it passes only if the value is truly nil in 3.0. ## Bug fixes There are a whole host of bugs that we squashed in this release, but most notable are these: * The gem now supports Rails 4.2. * The `serialize` matcher no longer emits a warning about `serialized_attributes` being deprecated. ([#627]) * `allow_value`, `validate_numericality_of` and `validate_inclusion_of` have been fixed so that they handle RangeErrors emitted from ActiveRecord 4.2. These exceptions arise whenever we attempt to set an attribute using a value that lies outside the range of the column (assuming the column is an integer). RangeError is now treated specially, failing the test instead of bubbling up as an error. ([#634], [#637], [#642]) * We've fixed a long-standing (2-year!) bug with `validate_uniqueness_of` and scoped attributes. Specifically, if one of these scopes was a polymorphic `*_type` attribute, and the model had another validation on the same attribute, the matcher would fail with an error. ([#203], [#366], [#592]) * `delegate_method` now works again with Shoulda Context. ([#591]) * `have_many` + `through` is fixed so that when the association does not exist, and the matcher fails, it does not raise an error when producing the failure message. ([#588]) * `validate_inclusion_of` + `with_message` is fixed so that it fails if given a message that does not match the message on the validation. ([#598]) * `route` is fixed so that when controller and action are specified in hash notation (e.g. `posts#show`), route parameters such as `id` do not need to be specified as a string but may be specified as a number as well. ([#602]) [#634]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda-matchers/issues/634 [#637]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda-matchers/issues/637 [#642]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda-matchers/issues/642 [#203]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda-matchers/issues/203 [#366]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda-matchers/issues/366 [#592]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda-matchers/issues/592 [#591]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda-matchers/issues/591 [#588]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda-matchers/issues/588 [#598]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda-matchers/issues/598 [#602]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda-matchers/issues/602 [#627]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda-matchers/issues/627 ## Features Association matchers, `validate_uniqueness_of`, `set_session`, and `delegate_method` also gained some new abilities, which you can read about in the [NEWS] file. [NEWS]: http://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda-matchers/tree/v2.8.0/NEWS.md ## Known issues As we alluded to earlier, our next immediate focus will be 3.0. However, once this is shipped, we will turn our attention to the following issues: * Fixing several Postgres-related bugs ([#402], [#521], [#554], [#587], [#607], [#639]) * Fixing `validate_numericality_of` so that it supports specifying a context with the `on` qualifier ([#356], [#358]) [postgres]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda-matchers/labels/Postgres [#402]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda-matchers/issues/402 [#521]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda-matchers/issues/521 [#554]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda-matchers/issues/554 [#587]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda-matchers/issues/587 [#607]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda-matchers/issues/607 [#639]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda-matchers/issues/639 [#356]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda-matchers/issues/356 [#358]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda-matchers/issues/358 ## Thanks Thank you to these fine contributors for their help on making Shoulda Matchers better: * [Aditya Kapoor][aditya-kapoor] * [Adrià Planas][planas] * [George Millo][georgemillo] * [Ian Zabel][iwz] * [Josh Kalderimis][joshk] * [Ken Liu][kenliu] * [Luciano Sousa][lucianosousa] * [Matt Gibson][mattgibson] * [Mauro George][maurogeorge] * [Peter Marsh][petedmarsh] * [Sean Devine][barelyknown] * [Sean Doyle][seanpdoyle] * [fervic] [barelyknown]: http://github.com/barelyknown [lucianosousa]: http://github.com/lucianosousa [iwz]: http://github.com/iwz [aditya-kapoor]: http://github.com/aditya-kapoor [maurogeorge]: http://github.com/maurogeorge [seanpdoyle]: http://github.com/seanpdoyle [joshk]: http://github.com/joshk [georgemillo]: http://github.com/georgemillo [petedmarsh]: http://github.com/petedmarsh [mattgibson]: http://github.com/mattgibson [kenliu]: http://github.com/kenliu [fervic]: http://github.com/fervic [planas]: http://github.com/planas ## New site Oh, and last but not least, Shoulda Matchers now has a [new site], thanks to one of our amazing designers, [Rachel Cope]. So if you're trying to convince a coworker to use the gem, now you know where to point them! [new site]: http://matchers.shoulda.io [Rachel Cope]: http://twitter.com/rachelcope