Question

I guess the problem is that I do not know how to use factory girl with Rspec correctly. Or testing in rails correctly for that matter. Still think it is a bit weird though..

I have a class, User, with the following factory:

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :user do
    name     "admin"
    email    "[e-mail]"
    adminstatus  "1"
    password "foobar"
    password_confirmation "foobar"
  end

  factory :user_no_admin, class: User do
    name     "user"
    email    "[e-mail]"
    adminstatus  "2"
    password "foobar"
    password_confirmation "foobar"
  end
...

My test looks like this:

...
describe "signin as admin user" do
  before { visit login_path }
  describe "with valid information" do
    let(:user_no_admin) { FactoryGirl.create(:user_no_admin) }
    let(:user) { FactoryGirl.create(:user) }
    before do
      fill_in "User",    with: user.name
      fill_in "Password", with: user.password
      click_button "Login"
    end

    it "should list users if user is admin" do 
      response.should have_selector('th', content: 'Name') 
      response.should have_selector('td', content: user_no_admin.name)
      response.should have_selector('td', content: user.name)
    end
  end      
end#signin as admin user
...

Basically I am trying to test that if you log in as an admin, you should see a list of all the users. I have a test for logging on as a non-admin later on in the file. I have a couple of users in the db already.

In the list of users ‘admin’ that logged in is displayed along with the users already in the db. ‘user’ is however not displayed unless I do something like this before:

fill_in "User",    with: user_no_admin.name
fill_in "Password", with: user_no_admin.password

It is as if it won’t exist unless I use it. However, if I use a puts it does print the information I am putting, even if I do not do the ‘fill_in’ above.

I have a similar example where a puts helps me.

describe "should have company name" do
  let(:company) { FactoryGirl.create(:company) }
  let(:category) { FactoryGirl.create(:category) }
  let(:company_category) { FactoryGirl.create(:company_category, company_id: company.id, category_id: category.id) }
  it "should contain companies name" do
    puts company_category.category_id
    get 'categories/' + company.categories[0].id.to_s
    response.should have_selector('h4', :content => company.name)
  end
end

Without the puts above I get a

Called id for nil

Do I have to initiate(?) an object created by Factory girl before I can use it in some way?

Any other code needed?

Answer 1

let(:whatever) 

Is not creating the objects until the first time you call them. If you want it to be available before first use, use

let!(:whatever)

instead.

Or use a before block:

before(:each) do
  @company = FactoryGirl.create(:company)
  ....
end

Which will create the objects before you need to use them.