Why doesn't my rspec test pass when my model validation fails as it should

Question

My model has validation like:

 # Account Model
    validates :email, presence: true
    validates :password, presence: true

So I created a factory_girl for this model that has blank values like:

 factory :account do
  end

 trait :empty do
    email ""
    password ""
  end

So my test looks like:

it "doesn't allow empty fields" do
  account = create(:account, :empty)
  account.should_not be_valid
end

So I am saying that this model, with empty fields, should fail the validation with "should_not".

Yet when I run rspec I get this error:

Validation failed: Email can't be blank, Password can't be blank
     # ./spec/models/account_spec.rb:29:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

What is the problem with my test?

Answer 1

The rspec error comes from this line account = create(:account, :empty), not this one account.should_not be_valid

create will attempt to create the record in the database, and go through the validation. use build instead