Shoulda and RSpec's before

Question

I try to set a instance variable in a subject before testing validity of model fields. I need to set this variable, because validation is conditional (it is used only for some type of users). So I have something like this:

  context "as a user" do

    before(:each) do
      subject = Organization.new
      subject.editor = "user"
    end

    it { subject.should validate_presence_of :name }

  end

But it doesn't work as expected:

 Failure/Error: it { subject.should validate_presence_of :description }
 RuntimeError:
   Organization#editor attr is not set

What did i miss?

Answer 1

subject in your before block is a local variable. It looks like you meant to use an explicit subject:

context "as a user" do
  subject { Organization.new }

  before(:each) do
    subject.editor = "user"
  end

  # usually, you don't explicitly name the subject in an `it` like this
  it { should validate_presence_of :name }

end