One rspec roles test fails, but almost identical tests succeeds

Question

I just added the Rolify gem, and am running some rspec tests.

2 tests are as follows:

  describe "roles" do

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

    it "should not approve incorrect roles" do
      @user.add_role :moderator
      @user.has_role? :admin
      should be_false
    end

    it "should approve correct roles" do
      @user.add_role :moderator
      @user.has_role? :moderator
      should be_true
    end

  end

The test result is:

  1) User roles should not approve incorrect roles
     Failure/Error: should be_false
       expected: false value
            got: #<User id: nil, email: "", encrypted_password: "", reset_password_token: nil, reset_password_sent_at: nil, remember_created_at: nil, sign_in_count: 0, current_sign_in_at: nil, last_sign_in_at: nil, current_sign_in_ip: nil, last_sign_in_ip: nil, confirmation_token: nil, confirmed_at: nil, confirmation_sent_at: nil, name: nil, position: nil, location: nil, admin: false, archived: false, public_email: false, created_at: nil, updated_at: nil>
     # ./spec/models/user_spec.rb:70:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

Finished in 1.37 seconds
7 examples, 1 failure

Failed examples:

rspec ./spec/models/user_spec.rb:67 # User roles should not approve incorrect roles

Randomized with seed 13074

factories.rb

FactoryGirl.define do

  factory :user do
    sequence(:name)       {|n| "Example User #{n}"}
    sequence(:email)      {|n| "email#{n}@program.com" }
    position              "Regular"
    location              "Anywhere, USA"
    public_email          false
    password              "foobar"
    password_confirmation "foobar"
    confirmed_at          Time.now
  end
end

How is the first test is failing with a nil object, but the second is passing?

EDIT

Upon further inspection, any test for should be_true passes, and any test for should be_false fails, regardless of whether the added role matches the checked role.

Answer 1

When your tests do should be_true what is happening is the should call is being delegated to the subject object (see RSpec docs for implicit receiver). In this case, your subject object is a User instance that has not yet been saved to the database. If your user_spec.rb file starts with describe User do, RSpec is automatically providing this default subject of User.new (see RSpec docs for implicit subject).

What this means is that your tests are essentially doing User.new.should be_true and User.new.should be_false. Since a User object will always evaluate to true, the should be_true test will always pass (although probably not for the reason you wanted it to) and the should be_false will always fail.

Based on the way your tests are written, maybe you meant something more like this:

describe "roles" do

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

  it "should not approve incorrect roles" do
    @user.add_role :moderator
    @user.has_role?(:admin).should be_false
  end

  it "should approve correct roles" do
    @user.add_role :moderator
    @user.has_role?(:moderator).should be_true
  end

end

Answer 2

I'm assuming that the example group is actually nested in a group declared with describe User do, yes?

The problem is that the last line of each example reads should xxx, but should has no receiver, so RSpec is substituting an instance of User for you.

What you want is:

describe User do
  describe "roles" do
    before(:each) do
      @user = FactoryGirl.create(:user)
    end

    it "should not approve incorrect roles" do
      @user.add_role :moderator
      @user.has_role?(:admin).should be_false
    end

    it "should approve correct roles" do
      @user.add_role :moderator
      @user.has_role?(:moderator).should be_true
    end
  end
end

HTH, David