Trait that contains several “check” methods that perform ScalaCheck property checks. If ScalaCheck finds a test case for which a property doesn't hold, the problem will be reported as a ScalaTest test failure.

To use ScalaCheck, you specify properties and, in some cases, generators that generate test data. You need not always create generators, because ScalaCheck provides many default generators for you that can be used in many situations. ScalaCheck will use the generators to generate test data and with that data run tests that check that the property holds. Property-based tests can, therefore, give you a lot more testing for a lot less code than assertion-based tests. Here's an example of using ScalaCheck from a JUnitSuite:

import org.scalatest.junit.JUnitSuite
import org.scalatest.prop.Checkers
import org.scalacheck.Arbitrary._
import org.scalacheck.Prop._

class MySuite extends JUnitSuite with Checkers {
  @Test
  def testConcat() {
    check((a: List[Int], b: List[Int]) => a.size + b.size == (a ::: b).size)
  }
}

The check method, defined in Checkers, makes it easy to write property-based tests inside ScalaTest, JUnit, and TestNG test suites. This example specifies a property that List's ::: method should obey. ScalaCheck properties are expressed as function values that take the required test data as parameters. ScalaCheck will generate test data using generators and repeatedly pass generated data to the function. In this case, the test data is composed of integer lists named a and b. Inside the body of the function, you see:

a.size + b.size == (a ::: b).size

The property in this case is a Boolean expression that will yield true if the size of the concatenated list is equal to the size of each individual list added together. With this small amount of code, ScalaCheck will generate possibly hundreds of value pairs for a and b and test each pair, looking for a pair of integers for which the property doesn't hold. If the property holds true for every value ScalaCheck tries, check returns normally. Otherwise, check will complete abruptly with a TestFailedException that contains information about the failure, including the values that cause the property to be false.

For more information on using ScalaCheck properties, see the documentation for ScalaCheck, which is available from http://code.google.com/p/scalacheck/.

To execute a suite that mixes in Checkers with ScalaTest's Runner, you must include ScalaCheck's jar file on the class path or runpath.

Property check configuration

The property checks performed by the check methods of this trait can be flexibly configured via the services provided by supertrait Configuration. The five configuration parameters for property checks along with their default values and meanings are described in the following table:

The check methods of trait Checkers each take a PropertyCheckConfiguration object as an implicit parameter. This object provides values for each of the five configuration parameters. Trait Configuration provides an implicit val named generatorDrivenConfig with each configuration parameter set to its default value. If you want to set one or more configuration parameters to a different value for all property checks in a suite you can override this val (or hide it, for example, if you are importing the members of the Checkers companion object rather than mixing in the trait.) For example, if you want all parameters at their defaults except for minSize and maxSize, you can override generatorDrivenConfig, like this:

implicit override val generatorDrivenConfig =
  PropertyCheckConfiguration(minSize = 10, sizeRange = 10)

Or, if hide it by declaring a variable of the same name in whatever scope you want the changed values to be in effect:

implicit val generatorDrivenConfig =
  PropertyCheckConfiguration(minSize = 10, sizeRange = 10)

In addition to taking a PropertyCheckConfiguration object as an implicit parameter, the check methods of trait Checkers also take a variable length argument list of PropertyCheckConfigParam objects that you can use to override the values provided by the implicit PropertyCheckConfiguration for a single check invocation. You place these configuration settings after the property or property function, For example, if you want to set minSuccessful to 500 for just one particular check invocation, you can do so like this:

check((n: Int) => n + 0 == n, minSuccessful(500))

This invocation of check will use 500 for minSuccessful and whatever values are specified by the implicitly passed PropertyCheckConfiguration object for the other configuration parameters. If you want to set multiple configuration parameters in this way, just list them separated by commas:

check((n: Int) => n + 0 == n, minSuccessful(500), maxDiscardedFactor(0.6))

The previous configuration approach works the same in Checkers as it does in GeneratorDrivenPropertyChecks. Trait Checkers also provides one check method that takes an org.scalacheck.Test.Parameters object, in case you want to configure ScalaCheck that way.

import org.scalacheck.Prop
import org.scalacheck.Test.Parameters
import org.scalatest.prop.Checkers._

check(Prop.forAll((n: Int) => n + 0 == n), Parameters.Default { override val minSuccessfulTests = 5 })

For more information, see the documentation for supertrait Configuration.