What's the best way to unit test protected & private methods in Ruby?

Question

What\'s the best way to unit test protected and private methods in Ruby, using the standard Ruby Test::Unit framework?

I\'m sure somebody will pipe up a

Answer 1

Similar to @WillSargent's response, here's what I've used in a describe block for the special case of testing some protected validators without needing to go through the heavyweight process of creating/updating them with FactoryGirl (and you could use private_instance_methods similarly):

  describe "protected custom `validates` methods" do
    # Test these methods directly to avoid needing FactoryGirl.create
    # to trigger before_create, etc.
    before(:all) do
      @protected_methods = MyClass.protected_instance_methods
      MyClass.send(:public, *@protected_methods)
    end
    after(:all) do
      MyClass.send(:protected, *@protected_methods)
      @protected_methods = nil
    end

    # ...do some tests...
  end