Question

UPDATED: I realise now that I’ve been misreading the diff, and I have a string or symbol on one side of the comparison. Still unsure how I should be putting the expectation in this test however..

I’m new to Rspec and TDD in general, and I’ve run into this problem. I have a controller that does this:

def index
  @users = User.page(params[:page])
end

(I’m using Kaminara to paginate)

And a spec:

describe "when the user DOES have admin status" do

  login_admin_user
  it "should allow the user access to the complete user list page" do
    get :index
    response.response_code.should == 200
  end

  describe "and views the /users page" do
    before(:each) do 
      User.stub(:page) {[ mock_model(User), mock_model(User), mock_model(User) ]}
    end

    it "should show all users" do
    get :index  
    assigns (:users).should =~ User.page
    end
  end

end

The spec fails with the following:

Failure/Error: assigns (:users).should =~ User.page
   expected: [#<User:0x5da86a8 @name="User_1004">, #<User:0x5d9c90c @name="User_1005">, #<User:0x5d93ef6 @name="User_1006">]
        got: :users (using =~)
   Diff:
   @@ -1,4 +1,2 @@
   -[#<User:0x5da86a8 @name="User_1004">,
   - #<User:0x5d9c90c @name="User_1005">,
   - #<User:0x5d93ef6 @name="User_1006">]
   +:users

Those result sets look identical. Why does this spec fail? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I think the problem is the space after assigns. It’s comparing the symbol :users to your list. Change it to:

assigns(:users).should =~ User.page

And just a note on how to read Rspec failures. The part after expected, is what you gave to should, whereas the part after got is the value your code actually produced. So it’s clear from the report that the result sets were not identical.