I am getting the following rspec test fail when I run rspec spec and am complete lost. Can any one help?

Question

I am trying to get the create, edit and destroy tests to work when following the todo list exercises but hit a wall. When I ran the rspec spec command to run all tests I get the following fail message and I can't work out how to solve this fail so can anyone help?

1) TodoListsController GET index assigns all todo_lists as @todo_lists
     Failure/Error: assigns(:todo_lists).should eq([todo_list])

       expected: [#<TodoList id: 2, title: "MyString", description: "My Description", created_at: "2014-08-13 21:22:23", updated_at: "2014-08-13 21:22:23">]
            got: #<ActiveRecord::Relation [#<TodoList id: 1, title: "Groceries", description: "Grocery list.", created_at: "2014-08-10 19:23:13", updated_at: "2014-08-10 19:23:13">, #<TodoList id: 2, title: "MyString", description: "My Description", created_at: "2014-08-13 21:22:23", updated_at: "2014-08-13 21:22:23">]>

       (compared using ==)

       Diff:
       @@ -1,2 +1,3 @@
       -[#<TodoList id: 2, title: "MyString", description: "My Description", created_at: "2014-08-13 21:22:23", updated_at: "2014-08-13 21:22:23">]
       +[#<TodoList id: 1, title: "Groceries", description: "Grocery list.", created_at: "2014-08-10 19:23:13", updated_at: "2014-08-10 19:23:13">,
       + #<TodoList id: 2, title: "MyString", description: "My Description", created_at: "2014-08-13 21:22:23", updated_at: "2014-08-13 21:22:23">]

     # ./spec/controllers/todo_lists_controller_spec.rb:37:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

Answer 1 · 2014-08-14T01:50:05Z

August 14, 2014 1:50am

  context "logged in" do¬
      it "assigns all todo_lists as @todo_lists" do¬
         todo_list = user.todo_lists.create! valid_attributes¬
          get :index, {}, valid_session¬
          assigns(:todo_lists).should eq([todo_list])¬
          expect(assigns(:todo_lists).map(&:user)).to eq([user])¬
       end¬

Whats happening is that you are testing your users index page to see how many todo_lists you have. In your test you are only expecting one todolist but you are getting multiple todo_lists.

  expect(assigns(:todo_lists).map(&:user)).to eq([user])¬

The map method takes an enumerable object and a block, and runs the block for each element, outputting each returned value from the block. The & sign next to your symbol (&:user) calls the to_proc method. It is the same as writing x {x.user}. So what this code allows you to do is map through the users todo_list and and output it to your screen. That way you can pick up both of your todo lists.

Answer 2 · 2015-12-23T02:27:22Z

December 23, 2015 2:27am

Users experiencing this issue might also be suffering from issues with the test database--some objects were persisting in the test database after the tests ran, even though it should be cleared. I was getting this exact failure, and numerous others, because the controller spec only expected the item it created, but got back several more items, and my tests were written to expect a specific count before and after methods were run, which were failing because the test database wasn't cleared.

I ended up following the wisdom of some Stack Overflow discussions and blog posts and added the database_cleaner gem to my testing group in my Gemfile, and changed the configuration to ensure that the database is truncated and cleaned before and after running tests. This resolved the failures.

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James Fewtrell

James Fewtrell

I am getting the following rspec test fail when I run rspec spec and am complete lost. Can any one help?

2 Answers

David Gross

David Gross

Nathan F.

Nathan F.