This was fun, in a not really that much fun kind of way

I am getting an old project ready to move to a different Heroku stack, which has involved a lot of running bundle and scratching my head

So I fire up the tests … and some fail with

NoMethodError:
  undefined method `validate_uniqueness_of' for #<RSpec::ExampleGroups::Blah::Validation::.....>

So, let the debugging begin

  1. Is it a problem with Shoulda? Try everything, and discover that shoulda is looking for that actual method. Also discovered that there are some useful methods on models that shoulda calls by default, but none of them have the word unique in them.
  2. Have another project that works, go into the debugger and discover that it calls the matcher and doesn’t just look for a method.
  3. Stroke chin, and then add type: :model, onto the spec declaration because other project needed it and worth a try. Problem goes away.
  4. Go diving into yet another project that has spec helper that works without type: model, newer versions of Rspec have a cheeky config attribute
config.infer_spec_type_from_file_location!

I add this to my helper and all the tests pass

So, I thought I would put something here that the next mug might find if the same thing happens to them and they won’t lose a morning to it.

This has been a community service announcement, have fun.