Examples

To verify that a string begins, ends and contains a particular phrase.

string actual = "ABCDEFGHI";
actual.Should().StartWith("AB").And.EndWith("HI").And.Contain("EF").And.HaveLength(9);

To verify that a collection contains a specified number of elements and that all elements match a predicate.

IEnumerable collection = new[] { 1, 2, 3 };
collection.Should().HaveCount(4, "because we thought we put four items in the collection"))

The nice thing about the second failing example is that it will throw an exception with the message

“Expected <4> items because we thought we put four items in the collection, but found <3>.”

To verify that a particular business rule is enforced using exceptions.

var recipe = new RecipeBuilder()
                    .With(new IngredientBuilder().For("Milk").WithQuantity(200, Unit.Milliliters))
                    .Build();
Action action = () => recipe.AddIngredient("Milk", 100, Unit.Spoon);
action
                    .ShouldThrow<RuleViolationException>()
                    .WithMessage("change the unit of an existing ingredient", ComparisonMode.Substring)
                    .And.Violations.Should().Contain(BusinessRule.CannotChangeIngredientQuanity);

One neat feature is the ability to chain a specific assertion on top of an assertion that acts on a collection or graph of objects.

dictionary.Should().ContainValue(myClass).Which.SomeProperty.Should().BeGreaterThan(0);
someObject.Should().BeOfType<Exception>().Which.Message.Should().Be("Other Message");
xDocument.Should().HaveElement("child").Which.Should().BeOfType<XElement>().And.HaveAttribute("attr", "1");

I’ve run into quite a few of these scenarios in which this chaining would make the unit test a lot easier to read.