Question

I have been developing a sample application after reading Rails 3 Tutorial book. In this application there are many Sections and each section has one Video.

Here are the artifacts of this application:

Models

class Video < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :sections
end

class Section < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :video

  validates :name, presence: true, length: { maximum: 50 }
end

RSpec

require 'spec_helper'

describe Section do

    let(:video) { Video.new(name: "Dummy Video Name", path: "/home/data/video/test.mov") }

  before do
    @section = video.sections.build(name: 'Test Section')
  end

    subject { @section }

    # Check for attribute accessor methods
    it { should respond_to(:name) }

    it { should respond_to(:video) }
    it { should respond_to(:video_id) }

    its(:video) { should == video }

    # Sanity check, verifying that the @section object is initially valid
    it { should be_valid }

    describe "when name is not present" do
        before { @section.name = "" }
        it { should_not be_valid }
    end

    describe "when name is too long" do
      before { @section.name = "a" * 52 }
      it { should_not be_valid }
    end

    describe "when video_id not present" do
        before { @section.video_id = nil }
            it { should_not be_valid }
    end
...
end

And the schema definitions of both Models

..
create_table "sections", :force => true do |t|
    t.string   "name"

    t.integer  "video_id"
    t.datetime "created_at", :null => false
    t.datetime "updated_at", :null => false
  end

create_table "videos", :force => true do |t|
    t.string   "name"
    t.string   "path"
    t.datetime "created_at", :null => false
    t.datetime "updated_at", :null => false
  end
...

While running above rspec I am getting following error.

Failures:

  1) Section 
     Failure/Error: it { should be_valid }
       expected valid? to return true, got false
     # ./spec/models/section_spec.rb:22:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'

  2) Section video 
     Failure/Error: its(:video) { should == video }
       expected: #<Video id: nil, name: "Dummy Video Name", path: "/home/data/video/test.mov", created_at: nil, updated_at: nil>
            got: nil (using ==)
     # ./spec/models/section_spec.rb:19:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'

I could map my requirement with User-Micropost relation describe in the book and aligned RSpec with them. I have limited knowledge on Rails and the whole echo system.

Please help me to resolve this issue and some reference to validation Models with RSpec(and shoulda) is highly appreciable.

• Amit Patel

Answer 1

I am able to resolve this issue by saving video in before block.

Here is the snippet

before do
  video.save
  @section = video.sections.build(name: 'Test Section')
end

The only difference between the Micropost model spec of Rails 3 Tutorial book and the above one is , the former one is using FactoryGirl#create. From https://github.com/thoughtbot/factory_girl/wiki/How-factory_girl-interacts-with-ActiveRecord I found that FactoryGirl.create method actually creates and save instance internally. So it was working there while it was no working in my code.

If you have better insight with RSpec for ActiveRecord then please share with us.

Thanks.

Amit Patel