Question

Here is the failing test:

context "when password does not match confirmation" do
  before { build(:user, :password_confirmation => 'mismatch') }
  it { should_not be_valid }
end

I am using Factory Girl’s build method for this test suite.

My user model:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :email, :name, :password, :password_confirmation
  has_secure_password

  validates :password_confirmation, presence: true
  validates :password, presence: true, length: { minimum: 5 }
end

UPDATE: you don’t need to mark :password field with :confirmation => true when using has_secure_password. It’s taken care of: see source code: https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/master/activemodel/lib/active_model/secure_password.rb

The validation is working just fine – I get the right error message when I try creating a new user at the console. So why is the test failing? Where is the bug?

Answer 1

The validation is not working just fine, you are not validating that the password_confirmation matches the password. See http://guides.rubyonrails.org/active_record_validations_callbacks.html#confirmation for more information.

Also, you need to make sure that you’re actually testing what you want to be testing – your subject for these tests is build(:user) when it needs to be the build(:user, password_confirmation: 'mismatch'). Change the before in your above code to a subject, to set the subject for the test correctly.