Rspec model testing - current_user in model

Question

I am using the public_activity gem to generate activity feeds in my app, and in my model, I am using devise's current_user to identify the owner of the activity.

class Question < ActiveRecord::Base
  ...
  include PublicActivity::Model
  tracked owner: ->(controller, model) { controller.current_user }
  ...
end

I realize that referencing current_user in the model is not the norm, but this is how they recommend doing it.

This works fine in the app, but I am running into trouble with my Rspec tests, where I get the following error:

Failure/Error: expect(create(:question)).to be_valid
NoMethodError:
undefined method `current_user' for nil:NilClass
# ./app/models/question.rb:8:in `block in <class:Question>'
# ./spec/models/question_spec.rb:7:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

The test itself is typical:

describe "Factory" do
  it "has a valid factory" do
    expect(create(:question)).to be_valid
  end
end

Here is my factory:

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :question do
    title { Faker::Lorem.characters(30) }
    body { Faker::Lorem.characters(150) }
    user_id { 1 }
    tag_list { "test, respec" }
  end
end

How do I get this current_user method in my model to work in my tests?

Answer 1

Personally I don't think you should reference the controller from within the model. Because you don't want to instantiate a controller object every time you want to access the model.

For example you might want to access the model from a background worker: who's your current_user and what's your controller?

The same applies to your test suite. You want to test your model, not your controller.

Also you might not always want to track activity.

A better approach is to pass in the current_user object from the controller. Ryan Bates has a nice example in his Railscast on Public Activity (see "Excluding Actions"):

class Question < ActiveRecord::Base
  include PublicActivity::Common
end

And for every activity you want to track

@question.create_activity :create, owner: current_user