RoR, RSpec - problem with validation testing

Question

Through rspec (I'm using rspec-1.3.0, rspec-rails-1.3.2 gems) generator (ruby script/generate rspec_model suggestion section_id:integer user_id:integer subject:string content:text state:string type:string) I created model and model spec and run rake db:migrate and rake:test:prepare

After that I started to work on my model spec:

require 'spec_helper'

describe Suggestion do
  before(:each) do
    @valid_attributes = {
      :section_id => 1,
      :user_id => 1,
      :subject => 'Inappropriate title',
      :content => 'The title of this section is inappropriate.',
      :state => 'new',
      :type => 'flag'
    }
  end

  it "should create a new instance given valid attributes" do
    Suggestion.create!(@valid_attributes)
  end

  it "should reject empty section_id attribute" do 
    empty_section_id_suggestion = Suggestion.new(@valid_attributes.merge(:section_id => ""))
    empty_section_id_suggestion.should_not be_valid
  end

  ...

Apart from 1st "should create a new instance given valid attributes" test I created 6 tests, basically each testing attribute of suggestion model for being empty - almost exactly same as "should reject empty section_id attribute" example.

When I run tests I get 6 failed tests, which is fine. First test "should create a new instance given valid attributes" passes.

Now when I go the the suggestion model and add validates_presence_of :all I get following error message related to 1st test:

ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid in 'Suggestion should create a new instance given valid attributes'
Validation failed: All can't be blank
./spec/models/suggestion_spec.rb:16:

When I try to run tests in isolation (validates_presence_of :attribute) all tests are passing, only with :type attribute I get again similar error message:

ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid in 'Suggestion should create a new instance given valid attributes'
Validation failed: Type can't be blank
./spec/models/suggestion_spec.rb:16:

I haven't encountered this problem before (have multiple similar models and their specs passing properly). It looks like it has problem with the :type attribute (it says it can't be empty), even I'm passing value to it through @valid_attributes. I tried to Google search but didn't find similar problem/solution.

Here is the test for :type attribute

it "should reject empty type attribute" do 
        empty_type_suggestion = Suggestion.new(@valid_attributes.merge(:type => ""))
        empty_type_suggestion.should_not be_valid
  end

Please check it out and let me know what I'm doing wrong here.

Thanks a lot for help

Peter

Answer 1

in your model you cant just say validate :all because :all isnt a column name.

class Suggestion < AR::Base
  validates_pressence_of :subject, :content
end

there would be no reason to validate the presence of id columns but i guess you can if you want.

api documentation: http://apidock.com/rails/ActiveModel/Validations/ClassMethods/validates_presence_of

Answer 2

So at the end I found the answer for the problem related to :type attribute:

http://www.gyrotechie.com/2008/09/activerecord-does-not-like-attributes-called-type/

The problem was that type is a reserved field name for classes that inherit from ActiveRecord.

I renamed the field name through migration and modified all related files and all is running properly now.