Question

I have intermittently (on various projects) had problems with rspec reloading an ActiveRecord object and then having the associated objects cleared, too.

An example of a failing spec that “should” work is as follows (ignore “goodness” of tests, this is a simplified example):

# Message has_many :message_attachments
# MessageAttachment belongs_to :message
describe Message, 'instance' do
  before(:each) do
    @it = Factory(:message)

    (1..3).each do
      @it.message_attachments << Factory(:message_attachment, :message => @it)
    end
  end

  it 'should order correctly' do
    # This test will pass
    @it.message_attachments.collect(&:id).should == [1, 2, 3]
  end

  it 'should reorder correctly' do
    @it.reorder_attachments([6, 4, 5])
    @it.reload
    # @it.message_attachments is [] now.
    @it.message_attachments.collect(&:id).should == [6, 4, 5]
  end
end

Answer 1

Strangely, to fix this I have to create the associated object with a defined parent object and also attach it to the parent object’s collection:

describe Message, 'instance' do
  before(:each) do
    @it = Factory(:message)

    (1..3).each do
      ma = Factory(:message_attachment, :message => @it)
      @it.message_attachments << ma
      ma.save
    end
  end

  it 'should order correctly' do
    @it.message_attachments.collect(&:id).should == [1, 2, 3]
  end

  it 'should reorder correctly' do
    @it.reorder_attachments([6, 4, 5])
    @it.reload
    @it.message_attachments.collect(&:id).should == [6, 4, 5]
  end
end