Question

I’m running these rspec tests for my controller:

require 'spec_helper'

describe MoviesController do
  describe 'searching for similar movies' do
    before :each do 
      @fake_movies = [mock('Movie'), mock('Movie')]
      @fake_movie = FactoryGirl.build(:movie, :id => "1", :title => "Star Wars", :director => "George Lucas") 
    end
    it 'should follow the route to the similar movies by director page' do
      assert_routing('movies/1/similar', {:controller => 'movies', :action => 'similar', :id => '1'}) 
    end

    it 'should find the similar movies by director' do
      Movie.should_receive(:find_by_id).with("1").and_return(@fake_movie)
      Movie.should_receive(:find_by_director).with(@fake_movie.director).and_return(@fake_movies)
      get :similar, {:id => "1"}
    end

    it 'should select the Similiar Movies template for rendering' do
      Movie.should_receive(:find_by_id).with("1").and_return(@fake_movie)
      Movie.should_receive(:find_by_director).with(@fake_movie.director).and_return(@fake_movies)
      get :similar, {:id => "1"}
      response.should render_template('similar')
    end

    it 'it should make the results available to the template' do
      Movie.should_receive(:find_by_id).with("1").and_return(@fake_movie)
      Movie.should_receive(:find_by_director).with(@fake_movie.director).and_return(@fake_movies)
      get :similar, {:id => "1"}
      assigns(:movies).should == @fake_results
    end
  end
end

Buy they are failing with this output:

    Failures:

  1) MoviesController searching for similar movies should find the similar movies by director
     Failure/Error: get :similar, {:id => "1"}
       <Movie(id: integer, title: string, rating: string, description: text, release_date: datetime, created_at: datetime, updated_at: datetime, director: string) (class)> received :find_by_director with unexpected arguments
         expected: ("George Lucas")
              got: ()
     # ./app/controllers/movies_controller.rb:62:in `similar'
     # ./spec/controllers/movies_controller_spec.rb:17:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

  2) MoviesController searching for similar movies should select the Similiar Movies template for rendering
     Failure/Error: get :similar, {:id => "1"}
       <Movie(id: integer, title: string, rating: string, description: text, release_date: datetime, created_at: datetime, updated_at: datetime, director: string) (class)> received :find_by_director with unexpected arguments
         expected: ("George Lucas")
              got: ()
     # ./app/controllers/movies_controller.rb:62:in `similar'
     # ./spec/controllers/movies_controller_spec.rb:23:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

  3) MoviesController searching for similar movies it should make the results available to the template
     Failure/Error: get :similar, {:id => "1"}
       <Movie(id: integer, title: string, rating: string, description: text, release_date: datetime, created_at: datetime, updated_at: datetime, director: string) (class)> received :find_by_director with unexpected arguments
         expected: ("George Lucas")
              got: ()
     # ./app/controllers/movies_controller.rb:62:in `similar'
     # ./spec/controllers/movies_controller_spec.rb:30:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

Finished in 0.15517 seconds
4 examples, 3 failures

Failed examples:

rspec ./spec/controllers/movies_controller_spec.rb:14 # MoviesController searching for similar movies should find the similar movies by director
rspec ./spec/controllers/movies_controller_spec.rb:20 # MoviesController searching for similar movies should select the Similiar Movies template for rendering
rspec ./spec/controllers/movies_controller_spec.rb:27 # MoviesController searching for similar movies it should make the results available to the template

When this is my controller method:

def similar 
    @movies = Movie.find_by_director(Movie.find_by_id(params[:id]))
  end

I do not understand why these tests are failing.

Answer 1

The problem was I was calling the wrong method. find_by_director isn’t the method that was supposed to be used, but find_all_by_director, hence what was going to the method was wrong.