diff --git a/R-package/DESCRIPTION b/R-package/DESCRIPTION
index 19410d65a..59728f3c2 100644
--- a/R-package/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/R-package/DESCRIPTION
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@ Suggests:
     ggplot2 (>= 1.0.0),
     DiagrammeR (>= 0.6),
     Ckmeans.1d.dp (>= 3.3.1),
-    vcd (>= 1.3)
+    vcd (>= 1.3),
+    testthat
 Depends:
     R (>= 2.10)
 Imports:
diff --git a/R-package/tests/testthat.R b/R-package/tests/testthat.R
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..53cc6caba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/R-package/tests/testthat.R
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+library(testthat)
+library(xgboost)
+
+test_check("xgboost")
diff --git a/R-package/tests/testthat/test_basic.R b/R-package/tests/testthat/test_basic.R
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..1c4a85921
--- /dev/null
+++ b/R-package/tests/testthat/test_basic.R
@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
+require(xgboost)
+
+context("basic functions")
+
+test_that("data loading", {
+  data(agaricus.train, package='xgboost')
+  data(agaricus.test, package='xgboost')
+})
+
+test_that("train and prediction",{
+  train = agaricus.train
+  test = agaricus.test
+  bst = xgboost(data = train$data, label = train$label, max.depth = 2,
+                eta = 1, nthread = 2, nround = 2, objective = "binary:logistic")
+  pred = predict(bst, test$data)
+})
+
+test_that("early stopping", {
+  res = xgb.cv(data = train$data, label = train$label, max.depth = 2, nfold = 5,
+               eta = 0.3, nthread = 2, nround = 20, objective = "binary:logistic",
+               early.stop.round = 3, maximize = FALSE)
+  expect_true(nrow(res)<20)
+  bst = xgboost(data = train$data, label = train$label, max.depth = 2,
+                eta = 0.3, nthread = 2, nround = 20, objective = "binary:logistic",
+                early.stop.round = 3, maximize = FALSE)
+  pred = predict(bst, test$data)
+})
+
+test_that("save_period", {
+  bst = xgboost(data = train$data, label = train$label, max.depth = 2,
+                eta = 0.3, nthread = 2, nround = 20, objective = "binary:logistic",
+                save_period = 10, save_name = "xgb.model")
+  pred = predict(bst, test$data)
+})