An RSpec2 error by the biggest newb in New Jersey :( | factory_girl, authlogic, rails3

Question

I'm writing an rspec scenario thats failing with:

 (#<User:0x1056904f0>).update_attributes(#<RSpec::Mocks::ArgumentMatchers::AnyArgMatcher:0x105623648>)
     expected: 1 time
     received: 0 times

users_controller_spec.rb:

describe "Authenticated examples" do
  before(:each) do
    activate_authlogic
    @user = Factory.create(:valid_user)
    UserSession.create(@user)
  end

describe "PUT update" do
    it "updates the requested user" do
      User.stub!(:current_user).and_return(@user)
      @user.should_receive(:update_attributes).with(anything()).and_return(true)
      put :update, :id => @user , :current_user => {'email' => 'Trippy'}
      puts "Spec Object Id : " + "#{@user.object_id}"
 end

users_controller.rb:

def update
  @user = current_user
  puts "Controller Object ID is : " + "#{@user.object_id}"

  respond_to do |format|
    if @user.update_attributes(params[:user])
      format.html { redirect_to(root_url, :notice => 'Successfully updated profile.') }
      format.xml  { head :ok }
    else
      format.html { render :action => "edit" }
      format.xml  { render :xml => @user.errors, :status => :unprocessable_entity }
    end
  end
end

user.rb - factories

Factory.define :valid_user, :class => User do |u|
  u.username "Trippy"
  u.password "password"
  u.password_confirmation "password"
  u.email "elephant@gmail.com"
  u.single_access_token "k3cFzLIQnZ4MHRmJvJzg"
  u.id "37"
end

Answer 1

Authlogic's standard helper methods like current_user don't call User.find directly. I believe it does current_user_session.user, where current_user_session calls UserSession.find, so you're not calling User.find directly. You could do some fancy chain stubbing there, but my suggestion is just to add this to your controller spec instead of what you're currently stubbing:

stub!(:current_user).and_return(@user)

In RSpec2 you might have to do

controller.stub!(:current_user).and_return(@user)

Edit: This should be your whole spec file:

describe "Authenticated examples" do
  before(:each) do
    activate_authlogic
    @user = Factory.create(:valid_user)
    UserSession.create(@user)
  end

describe "PUT update" do

  describe "with valid params" do
    it "updates the requested user" do
      stub!(:current_user).and_return(@user)
      @user.should_receive(:update_attributes).with(anything()).and_return(true)
      put :update, :id => @user , :current_user => {'email' => 'Trippy'}
    end
 end

Answer 2

I think you're confusing stubs with message expectations. The line

User.should_receive(:find)

tells Rspec to expect the User model to receive a find message. Whereas:

User.stub!(:find)

replaces the find method so that the test can pass. In your example the thing you're testing is whether update_attributes is called successfully, so that ought to be where the message expectation goes, and the job of all the other testing code is just to set up the prerequisites.

Try replacing that line with:

User.stub!(:find).and_return(@user)

Note that find returns the object, not just its id. Also, note that stubbing out find here serves only to speed things up. As written the example gets through should_receive(:find) successfully, and that is happening because you're using Factories to create users in the test database. You could take the stub out and the test should still work, but at the cost of hitting the database.

Another tip: if you're trying to figure out why a controller test isn't working, sometimes it's helpful to know if it is being blocked by before filters. You can check for this with:

controller.should_receive(:update)

If that fails, the update action is not being reached, probably because a before filter has redirected the request.