Standard results

The specs2 Quick Start guide introduces matchers to create expectations but you can use other kinds of predefined results to implement your examples.

Boolean results

This is the simplest kind of result you can define for an expectation but also the least expressive! It can be useful for simple expectations but a failure will give few information on what went wrong:

new mutable.Specification:
  "this example is ok" >> {
    1 == 1
  }
  "this one is not" >> {
    // fails with 'the value is false'...
    1 == 2
  }

Not only that but in unit specification no exception will be thrown so you need to && and || operators to connect your assertions if they span several lines.

Standard results

Some other results will give you an additional piece of meaning:

• success when your example is ok
• failure when your example is incorrect
• anError when an exception occurs
• skipped when you want to skip the example. You can add a more specific message with skipped("because it just doesn't work in these conditions")
• pending usually means “not implemented yet”, but you can add a more specific message with pending("because I don't have time for this")
  
  

Two additional results are also available to track the progress of features:

• done a Success with the message “DONE”
• todo a Pending with the message “TODO”

Skipping an example

If you already have some code for your example, adding skipped at the end to skip it is not very effective:

• there is a possibility that the code throws an exception
• the code will be executed which will waste resources
  
  

What you want in that case in to skip the whole block:

s2" this example *must* be skipped $e1"

def e1 = skipped {
  // whatever code is in there, it will not be executed and the result will be skipped
  throw new Exception("uh-oh")
  1 === 1
}

Setting an example as Pending

Similarly you can mark the example as Pending:

s2" this example is pending for now$e1"

def e1 = pending {
  // whatever code is in there, it will not be executed and the result will be pending
  throw new Exception("uh-oh")
  1 === 1
}

Standard MatchResults

When combining matchers you might be expected to return a Result. There are predefined values for those too:

• ok or ok(message) for a Success
• ko or ko(message) for a Failure