RSpec uniqueness email test fails with FactoryGirl

Question

Edit

Using the answers to the question I changed the test to the following which tests correctly and passes..

describe "when email is already taken" do
  let(:user_with_same_email) { @user.dup }
  before do
    user_with_same_email.email.upcase!
    user_with_same_email.save
  end

  it { user_with_same_email.should_not be_valid }
end

Note: Not using let(:user_with_same_email) { @user.dup } makes the test fail as it cannot find the variable user_with_same_email if it's simply duplicated in the before block as in the chosen answer to this question.

---

I have a User model and a user_spec.rb test file which has various validations against the User models attributes.

Previously I was writing the following at the top of my user_spec.rb file to test the User model:

describe User do

  before do
  @user = User.new(name: "Example User", email: "user@example.com",
                 password: "foobar88", password_confirmation: "foobar88")
end
...

I wanted to move this model creation to FactoryGirl so I created a factories.rb file:

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :user do
    name "foo"
    email { "#{name}@example.com" }
    password "foobar99"
    password_confirmation "foobar99"
  end
end

I then changed my user_spec.rb:

describe User do

  before do
    @user = FactoryGirl.create(:user)
  end
...

Now every test passes as before except one:

describe "when email is already taken" do
  before do
    user_with_same_email = @user.dup
    user_with_same_email.email = @user.email.upcase
    user_with_same_email.save
  end

  it { should_not be_valid }
end

Now unless `FactoryGirl is skipping my email uniqueness validation I can't figure out what is going wrong here.

My User model validation code:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base

  VALID_EMAIL_REGEX = /\A[\w+\-.]+@[a-z\d\-.]+\.[a-z]+\z/i unless const_defined?(:VALID_EMAIL_REGEX)

  has_secure_password
  attr_accessible :name, :email, :password, :password_confirmation

  has_many :programs

  before_save { self.email.downcase! }

  validates :name, presence: true, length: { maximum: 50 }
  validates :email, presence: true, format: { with: VALID_EMAIL_REGEX },
                    uniqueness: { case_sensitive: false }

Answer 1

The problem is that when you say it { should_not be_valid }, RSpec checks the subject. in this case the subject is User.new (you have "describe User" at the top so unless you specified something else this is the default).

You want to check the user_with_same_email for validity instead.

edit: Try this, I think it might work:

describe "when email is already taken" do
  before do
    @user_with_same_email = @user.dup
    @user_with_same_email.email = @user.email.upcase
    @user_with_same_email.save
  end

  it { @user_with_same_email.should_not be_valid }
end

Answer 2

Looks like perhaps you're doing (or referencing) Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial. Here's what my code looks like for what you're doing, so I hope it can be of use:

spec/models/user_spec.rb

describe User do

  let(:user) { valid_user }
  subject { user }

  # ...

  context "when email address is already taken" do
    before { save_user(user) }
    it { should_not be_valid }
  end

  # ...
end

spec/support/utilities.rb (to create a specific user)

def valid_user
  User.new(name:     "Example User", 
           email:    "user@example.com",
           password: "foobar", 
           password_confirmation: "foobar")
end

# ...

def save_user(user)
  user_with_same_email = user.dup
  user_with_same_email.email.upcase!
  user_with_same_email.save
end

For reference: spec/factories.rb (to just create any old random user)

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :user do
    sequence(:name)  { |n| "Person #{n}" }
    sequence(:email) { |n| "person_#{n}@example.com" }
    password "foobar"
    password_confirmation "foobar"

    # ...
  end
  # ...
end

Update: Found the answer you were looking for at this StackOverflow answer outlining the same problem. I tested it with my code as well and it worked for me.

Update 2: Changed my code around as well, using FactoryGirl.build for times when I want a user but don't want it saved to the database. This StackOverflow answer helped me understand.

spec/models/user_spec.rb

describe User do

  let(:user) { FactoryGirl.create(:user) }
  subject { user }

  # ...

  context "when email address is already taken" do
    let(:user_with_same_email) do
      FactoryGirl.build(:user, email: user.email)
    end

    subject { user_with_same_email }

    before do
      user_with_same_email.email.upcase!
      user_with_same_email.save
    end

    it { should_not be_valid }
  end
  # ...
end

Thanks for asking this question. Gave me some food for thought and some refactoring to do in my own code.