Read more

RSpec < 2.11: ActiveRecord scopes must be loaded before using the "=~" matcher

Henning Koch
February 17, 2011Software engineer at makandra GmbH

In newer Rspec versions this is no longer necessary.

To test whether two arrays have the same elements regardless of order, you can use the =~ matcher in RSpec < 2.11:

actual_array.should =~ expected_array
Illustration web development

Do you need DevOps-experts?

Your development team has a full backlog? No time for infrastructure architecture? Our DevOps team is ready to support you!

  • We build reliable cloud solutions with Infrastructure as code
  • We are experts in security, Linux and databases
  • We support your dev team to perform
Read more Show archive.org snapshot

If either side is an ActiveRecord scope rather than an array, you should call to_a on it first, since =~ does not play nice with scopes:

actual_scope.to_a.should =~ expected_scope.to_a

If you use RSpec >= 2.11 we recommend using the match_array or contain_exactly matchers instead of =~.
Use the eq matcher only if the order of records matters.

Posted by Henning Koch to makandra dev (2011-02-17 14:16)