Question

I have a user model:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :email, :name
  # admin only
  attr_accessible :email, :name, :admin, :as => :admin

And the following model spec:

describe "accessible attributes" do

  let(:new_user){ FactoryGirl.create(:user) }
  @admin_attrs = { admin: true, name: "ben", email: "[e-mail]"}

  it "can not be set on create" do

    # variant 1 - test fails, AM::MAS::Error NOT thrown
    expect do
      User.new(@admin_attrs)
    end.should raise_error(ActiveModel::MassAssignmentSecurity::Error)

    # variant 2 - test passes, AM::MAS::Error NOT thrown
    expect do
      User.new(admin: true, name: "ben", email: "[e-mail]", password: "123xyz", password_confirmation: "123xyz")
    end.should raise_error(ActiveModel::MassAssignmentSecurity::Error)

  end

I can’t figure out why variant 1 of my test fails, but variants 2 passes. The error message I get is:

1) User accessible attributes can not be set on create
     Failure/Error: expect do
       expected ActiveModel::MassAssignmentSecurity::Error but nothing was raised

They are basically the same test. What am I doing wrong? In fact, if I perform test 1 from the console, it does throw a MAS::Error, as expected. I’m confused.

Answer 1

@admin_attrs is probably nil as far as your first text example is concerned because it’s not being set up in a before hook (or through ‘let’)