Are multiple asserts bad in a unit test? Even if chaining?

Question

Is there anything wrong with checking so many things in this unit test?:

ActualModel = ActualResult.AssertViewRendered()        // check 1
                           


        

Answer 1

Noting for future readers that this question and its duplicate Is it bad practice to have more than one assertion in a unit test? have opposite majority opinions, so read them both and decide for yourself.

My experience is that the most useful quantum of testing is not the assertion, but the scenario -- that is, there should be one unit test for a given set of initial conditions and method call, with as many assertions as are necessary to assert the expected final conditions. Having one unit test per assertion leads to duplicate setup or tortuous workarounds to avoid the duplication (such as the awful deeply nested rspec contexts that I'm seeing more and more of lately). It also multiplies tests, drastically slowing your suite.