Keeping user in the database between tests using Capybara?

Question

My issue is that I have to create a new user and login for each individual capybara test.

An example is below:

require 'spec_helper'

describe "users" do
  describe "user registration" do
    it "should create a new user and log in" do
      # Register a new user to be used during the testing process
      visit signup_path
      fill_in 'Email', with: 'testuser'
      fill_in 'Password', with: 'testpass'
      fill_in 'Password confirmation', with: 'testpass'
      click_button 'Create User'
      current_path.should == root_path
      page.should have_content 'Thank you for signing up!'
    end
  end

  describe "user login" do
    it "should log in" do

      # log in
      visit login_path
      fill_in 'Email', with: 'testuser'
      fill_in 'Password', with: 'testpass'
      click_button 'Log In'
      current_path.should == root_path
      page.should have_content 'Logged in!'
    end
  end
end

The login test fails because the user no longer exists in the database for that test.

This could be fixed simply by putting both in one test, but I believe that is bad practice.

Also I have another file which currently is registering and logging in between each test using a before_do, which also seems to be quite bad... you can see that code here.

For the record this is my first rails app so perhaps I am trying to do this the wrong way. I would like to dry it up as much as possible..

Is capybara really this bad to use on pages that require user login?

Answer 1

I have done it this way.

require "spec_helper"

  describe "Users" do
     subject { page }
     describe "User Registration" do
        before { visit signup_path }

        let(:submit) { "Sign up" }

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

        describe "with valid information" do
           before do
             fill_in "Email",        with: "user@example.com"
             fill_in "Password",     with: "foobar12"
             fill_in "Password confirmation", with: "foobar12"
           end

           it "should create a user" do
              expect { click_button submit }.to change(User, :count).by(1)
           end

           describe "after registration" do
             before { click_button submit }
             it { should have_content 'Thank you for signing up!' }
           end

           describe "after registration signout and login" do
              let(:user) { User.find_by_email('user@example.com') }
              before do
                click_button submit 
                visit signout_path
                sign_in user     # sign_in is a method which u can define in your spec/support/utilities.rb . Define once and use at multiple places.
              end
              it { should have_content 'Logged In!' }
              it { should have_link('Logout') }
           end
        end
     end    
   end

# spec/support/utilities.rb

def sign_in(user)
  visit sign_path
  fill_in "Email",    with: user.email
  fill_in "Password", with: user.password
  click_button "Log in" 
end

your every describe and it block will run after the before block in parent that's why we need to click_button in every block in above test cases.