Question

I’m having trouble with Exercise 4 in Chapter 7 of railstutorial.org.

Here are the tests:

    describe "signup" do
    before { visit signup_path }

    describe "with invalid information" do
        it "should not create a user" do
            expect { click_button "Create my Account".not_to change(User, :count) }
        end
    end

    describe "error messages" do
        before { click_button "Create my account" }

        it { should have_selector('title', text: "Sign up") }
        it { should have_content('error') }
    end

    describe "with valid information" do
        before do
            fill_in "Name", with: "Example User"
            fill_in "Email", with: "[e-mail]"
            fill_in "Password", with: "foobar"
            fill_in "Confirmation", with: "foobar"
        end

        it "should create a user" do
            expect do
                click_button "Create my account"
            end.to change(User, :count).by(1)
        end
    end

    describe "after saving the user" do
        before { click_button "Create my account" }
        let(:user) { User.find_by_email('[e-mail]') }

        it { should have_selector('title', text: user.name) }
        it { should have_selector('div.alert.alert-success', text: 'Welcome') }
    end
end

Here is what it’s supposed to test, users_controller.rb:

def create
 @user = User.new(params[:user])
 if @user.save
  flash[:success] = "Welcome to the Sample App!"
  redirect_to @user
 else
    render 'new'
 end
end

Here’s the show.html.erb code as well:

<% provide(:title, @user.name) %>
<div class="row">
<aside class="span4">
    <section>
        <h1>
            <%= gravatar_for @user %>
            <%= @user.name %>
        </h1>
    </section>
</aside>
</div>

When I run my tests, I get this:

$ bundle exec rspec spec/requests/user_pages_spec.rb 
........FF

Failures:

  1) User Pages signup after saving the user 
 Failure/Error: it { should have_selector('title', text: user.name) }
 NoMethodError:
   undefined method `name' for nil:NilClass
 # ./spec/requests/user_pages_spec.rb:57:in `block (4 levels) in <top (required)>'

  2) User Pages signup after saving the user 
 Failure/Error: it { should have_selector('div.alert.alert-success', text: 'Welcome') }
   expected css "div.alert.alert-success" with text "Welcome" to return something
 # ./spec/requests/user_pages_spec.rb:58:in `block (4 levels) in <top (required)>'

Finished in 0.86152 seconds
10 examples, 2 failures

Failed examples:

rspec ./spec/requests/user_pages_spec.rb:57 # User Pages signup after saving the user 
rspec ./spec/requests/user_pages_spec.rb:58 # User Pages signup after saving the user 

It should save the test user to the test db, but for some reason, user.name is turning out nil. Any ideas?

Thank you!

Answer 1

Without going over your code in detail to understand the context of everything, it’s not that user.name is returning nil, it’s that user is nil, and therefore has no method/property name as seen here:

undefined method `name' for nil:NilClass

You have this line here before the test case defining the symbol :user:

let(:user) { User.find_by_email('[e-mail]') }

yet you reference the object user in your test:

it { should have_selector('title', text: user.name) }

Change the symbol :user to user in the former and your tests should pass.