Why are my spec tests failing when they should be passing?

Question

I started building my app using guard/minitest and then decided to switch over to rspec. I added rspec to my gemfile for test and development (below)

group :development, :test do 
    gem 'byebug'
    gem 'web-console'
    gem 'spring'
    gem 'annotate'
    gem 'rspec-rails'
end

group :test do
    gem 'minitest-reporters'
    gem 'mini_backtrace'
    gem 'guard-minitest'
end

I bundle installed and saw the new spec directory. But for some reason that I have not been able to figure out some tests are failing that should be passing.

Here's my user_spec.rb in spec/models/user_spec.rb

require 'rails_helper'

#RSpec.describe User, :type => :model do
#  pending "add some examples to (or delete) #{__FILE__}"
describe User do
  let(:valid_attributes) {
    {
      first_name: "Jacqueline",
      last_name: "Boltik",
      email: "jboltik@oolaabox.com",
      password: "password",
      password_confirmation: "password"
    }
  }
  context "validations" do
    let(:user) { User.new(valid_attributes) }

    before do
      User.create(valid_attributes)
    end

    it "requires an email" do 
      expect(user).to validate_presence_of(:email)
    end

    it "requires a unique email" do
      expect(user).to validate_uniqueness_of(:email)
    end

    it "requires a unique email (case insensitive)" do
      user.email = "JBOLTIK@OOLAABOX.COM"
      expect(user).to validate_uniqueness_of(:email)
    end

    it "requires the email address to look like an email" do
      user.email = "jboltik"
      expect(user).to_not be_valid
    end

  end

  describe "#downcase_email" do
    it "makes the email attribute lower case" do
      user = User.new(valid_attributes.merge(email: "JBOLTIK@OOLAABOX.COM"))
      expect{ user.downcase_email }.to change{ user.email }.
        from("JBOLTIK@OOLAABOX.COM").
        to("jboltik@oolaabox.com")
    end

    it "downcases an email before saving" do
      user = User.new(valid_attributes)
      user.email = "MIKE@TEAMTREEHOUSE.COM"
      expect(user.save).to be_true
      expect(user.email).to eq("mike@teamtreehouse.com")
    end
  end
end

And here's the model user.rb in app/models/user.rb

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
    has_secure_password
    validates :email, presence: true,
                    uniqueness: true,
                    format: {
                      with: /\A[A-Za-z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Za-z0-9.-]+\.[A-Za-z]+\z/
                    }

    before_save :downcase_email

    def downcase_email
        self.email = email.downcase
    end
end

When I run the test $ rspec spec/models/user_spec.rb

it returns two passing tests and 4 failures. I copied the code directly from the exercise and I can't figure out why it's failing. I'm using Rails 4.1 Ruby 2.1 and Rspec 3.1

Thank you in advance for any help!

Answer 1 · 2014-12-15T18:33:52Z

December 15, 2014 6:33pm

It's only my preliminary theory but you might need the shoulda-matchers gem which gives you those validate_uniqueness_of tests.

Answer 2 · 2014-12-15T19:34:52Z

December 15, 2014 7:34pm

The final test passed by changing

it "downcases an email before saving" do
      user = User.new(valid_attributes)
      user.email = "JBOLTIK@OOLAABOX.COM"
      expect(user.save).to be_true
      expect(user.email).to eq("jboltik@oolaabox.com")
    end

to

it "downcases an email before saving" do
      user = User.new(valid_attributes)
      user.email = "JBOLTIK@OOLAABOX.COM"
      expect(user.save).to be true
      expect(user.email).to eq("jboltik@oolaabox.com")
    end

Now everything passes :) Seems like a change in syntax with Rspec 3 was causing the issue.

Answer 3 · 2014-12-15T18:57:39Z

December 15, 2014 6:57pm

Here's the entire console output. Thanks for your help!

$ rspec spec/models/user_spec.rb

WARNING: Nokogiri was built against LibXML version 2.9.2, but has dynamically loaded 2.9.0
FFF..F

Failures:

  1) User validations requires an email
     Failure/Error: expect(user).to validate_presence_of(:email)
     NoMethodError:
       undefined method `validate_presence_of' for #<RSpec::ExampleGroups::User::Validations:0x007fe14bd9d468>
     # ./spec/models/user_spec.rb:23:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

  2) User validations requires a unique email
     Failure/Error: expect(user).to validate_uniqueness_of(:email)
     NoMethodError:
       undefined method `validate_uniqueness_of' for #<RSpec::ExampleGroups::User::Validations:0x007fe150467c90>
     # ./spec/models/user_spec.rb:27:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

  3) User validations requires a unique email (case insensitive)
     Failure/Error: expect(user).to validate_uniqueness_of(:email)
     NoMethodError:
       undefined method `validate_uniqueness_of' for #<RSpec::ExampleGroups::User::Validations:0x007fe14a589d68>
     # ./spec/models/user_spec.rb:32:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

  4) User#downcase_email downcases an email before saving
     Failure/Error: expect(user.save).to be_true
       expected true to respond to `true?`
     # ./spec/models/user_spec.rb:53:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

Finished in 0.11439 seconds (files took 2.38 seconds to load)
6 examples, 4 failures

Failed examples:

rspec ./spec/models/user_spec.rb:22 # User validations requires an email
rspec ./spec/models/user_spec.rb:26 # User validations requires a unique email
rspec ./spec/models/user_spec.rb:30 # User validations requires a unique email (case insensitive)
rspec ./spec/models/user_spec.rb:50 # User#downcase_email downcases an email before saving

Answer 4 · 2014-12-15T19:07:00Z

December 15, 2014 7:07pm

Great advice - I just installed the shoulda_matchers gem and now the tests pass all except 1. I followed the instructions to install shoulda_matchers here - in case anyone else is facing this same issue the instructions are very clear: https://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda-matchers#rspec

After installing shoulda_matchers I retested and only got 1 failure.

$ rspec spec/models/user_spec.rb
WARNING: Nokogiri was built against LibXML version 2.9.2, but has dynamically loaded 2.9.0
.....F

Failures:

  1) User#downcase_email downcases an email before saving
     Failure/Error: expect(user.save).to be_true
       expected true to respond to `true?`
     # ./spec/models/user_spec.rb:53:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

Finished in 0.20742 seconds (files took 3.7 seconds to load)
6 examples, 1 failure

Failed examples:

rspec ./spec/models/user_spec.rb:50 # User#downcase_email downcases an email before saving

Answer 5 · 2015-02-23T08:51:00Z

February 23, 2015 8:51am

Thanks for posting your solution, Jacqueline! You helped me solve the same problem.

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