Question

I followed The Ruby on Rails Tutorial Book by Michael Hartl, modified it, added Devise for user authentication and ran into an issue with the uniqueness tests of the email.

# spec/models/user_spec.rb

require 'spec_helper'

describe User do
  before do
    @user = User.new(username: 'ExampleUser',
                     email:    '[e-mail]',
                     password: 'passworD123')
    @user.save
  end

  subject { @user }

  it { should respond_to(:email) }
  it { should respond_to(:name) }
  it { should respond_to(:username) }
  it { should respond_to(:password) }

  it { should be_valid }

  describe 'username is already taken' do
    before do
      user_with_same_username = @user.dup
      user_with_same_username.username = @user.username.upcase
      user_with_same_username.email = 'a@b.c'
      user_with_same_username.save
    end

    it { should_not be_valid }
  end

  describe 'email address is already taken' do
    before do
      user_with_same_email = @user.dup
      user_with_same_email.username = 'differentUsername'
      user_with_same_email.email = @user.email.upcase
      user_with_same_email.save
    end

    it { should_not be_valid }
  end

  .
  .

Failures:

  1) User email address is already taken
     Failure/Error: it { should_not be_valid }
       expected valid? to return false, got true
     # ./spec/models/user_spec.rb:104:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

The uniqueness of email is set although it is not needed because Devise does it already. I changed user_with_same_email.save to user_with_same_email.save! and then I got a validation error for the email address because it’s already taken:

1) User email address is already taken
   Failure/Error: user_with_same_email.save!
   ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid:
     Validation failed: Email has already been taken
   # ./spec/models/user_spec.rb:101:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

The return value of user_with_same_email.save is false and it { should_not be_valid } checks this case, but why is the test still failing?

Answer 1

Concerning your actual issue, the reason is simple: you’re not testing upon the proper subject

Other guidelines:

• Do not save an object if you know it’s invalid, you’re just wasting time.

• Same for your first specs, do you really need a persisted object? I guess not..

• Last but not least: consider using factories, it’s reusable and will let you have more consistent tests.

Here is what your specs could look like:

require 'spec_helper'

describe User do
  let(:user_attributes) { {
      username: 'ExampleUser',
      email:    '[e-mail]',
      password: 'passworD123'
    }
  }

  subject(:user) { User.new(user_attributes) }

  it { should respond_to(:email) }
  it { should respond_to(:name) }
  it { should respond_to(:username) }
  it { should respond_to(:password) }
  it { should be_valid }

  context 'with existing user in db' do
    before(:each) { user.save }

    describe 'username is already taken' do
      subject(:user_with_same_username) { User.new(user_attributes.merge(email: '[e-mail]')) }
      it { should_not be_valid }
    end

    describe 'email address is already taken' do
       subject(:user_with_same_email) { User.new(user_attributes.merge(username: 'another name')) }
       it { should_not be_valid }
    end
  end
end