Discover errors in Invalid Record factory girl

Question

I have a user factory like this:

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :user do
    email "email@x.com"
    password "123456789"
  end
end

I am trying to create a spec for the user:

describe User do
  it "should create a user with password" do
    user = FactoryGirl.create(:user, password: "secret")
    user.password.should == "secret"
  end   
end

When I run the test, I get this message:

  1) User should create a user with password
     Failure/Error: user = FactoryGirl.create(:user, password: "secret")
     ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid:
       is invalid
     # ./spec/models/user_spec.rb:3:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'
     # -e:1:in `<main>'

The problem is: how to discover what are the fields in the model that are invalid? In other words, how to print the error messages inside the model?

Answer 1

You can always temporarily change your test to:

user = FactoryGirl.build(:user, password: "secret")

and then check user.valid? and user.errors

Answer 2

Sometimes the build method gives you the same ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid: Record invalid. In that case you might want to look for any associated records that your factory creates, maybe the validation problem comes from those instead.