Rails Factory Girl RSpec Testing Has-Many Relationship of Nested Resources

Question

Note: A business has many catalogs and has products, and a catalog has many products. The associations are properly defined and they are working in the application front end. But I can't make this test pass. I am using friendly_id so you will see me using @model.slug on some of the find methods

I am trying this test out:

describe "GET 'show'" do
  before do
    @business = FactoryGirl.create(:business)
    @catalog = FactoryGirl.create(:catalog, :business=>@business)
    @product1 = FactoryGirl.create(:product, :business=>@business, :catalog=>@catalog)
    @product2 = FactoryGirl.create(:product, :business=>@business, :catalog=>@catalog)
  end

  def do_show
    get :show, :business_id=>@business.slug, :id=>@catalog.slug
  end

  it "should show products" do
    @catalog.should_receive(:products).and_return([@product1, @product2])
    do_show
  end
end

with this factory (note that a business and catalog factory is define somewhere else, and they are associations):

FactoryGirl.define do
  sequence :name do |n|
    "product#{n}"
  end

  sequence :description do |n|
    "This is description #{n}"
  end

  factory :product do
    name
    description
    business
    catalog
  end
end

with this show action:

def show
    @business = Business.find(params[:business_id])
    @catalog = @business.catalogs.find(params[:id])
    @products = @catalog.products.all
    respond_with(@business, @catalog)
  end

but I am getting this error:

CatalogsController GET 'show' should show products
     Failure/Error: @catalog.should_receive(:products).and_return([@product1, @product2])
       (#<Catalog:0x000001016185d0>).products(any args)
           expected: 1 time
           received: 0 times
     # ./spec/controllers/catalogs_controller_spec.rb:36:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

furthermore, this code block will also indicate that Business model has not received the find method:

Business.should_receive(:find).with(@business.slug).and_return(@business)

Answer 1

The problem here is that the @catalog instance variable you set up in the spec is not the same as the @catalog instance variable in the controller.

@catalog in the spec will never receive any messages sent to @catalog in the controller.

What you need to do instead is to change this in your spec:

@catalog.should_receive(:products).and_return([@product1, @product2])

to

Catalog.any_instance.should_receive(:products).and_return([@product1, @product2])

Check out the RSpec documentation on any_instance.should_receive here: https://www.relishapp.com/rspec/rspec-mocks/v/2-6/docs/message-expectations/expect-a-message-on-any-instance-of-a-class