Factory not registered error due to to_s method in model

Question

I created factories for the model ABCD and it's associated models including the model "another_model" which has a belongs_to relation to ABCD.

The model ABCD has a to_s method that returns

def to_s
    "Check: #{another_model.check_number} SSNUM: #{something_some_val}"
end

Now when I try to test an action in the ABCD_Controller class I get this error.

Failure/Error: get :document_save, {"abcd"=>attributes_for(FactoryGirl.create(:a_patpay)) }

ArgumentError:

Factory not registered: Check: 456465 SSNUM: 06122469

Now Check and SSNUM are obviously not attributes of the ABCD Model they are just strings returned by the to_s method in the model. Wondering why FactoryGIrl thinks they are attributes that are not registered...

Any help is much appreciated!

Answer 1

Presumably, FactoryGirl.create(:a_patpay) is defined to return an instance of ABCD, which is not a valid argument for FactoryGirl.attributes_for and which prints out as you've indicated due to the definition of to_s.