Why use 'reload' method after saving object? (Hartl Rails Tut 6.30)

Question

I'm working on the exercises for chapter 6 of Hartl's Rails 4 Tutorial. The first exercise tests to make sure that user email addresses are down-cased correctly:

require 'spec_helper'

describe User do
  .
  .
  .
  describe "email address with mixed case" do
    let(:mixed_case_email) { "Foo@ExAMPle.CoM" }

    it "should be saved as all lower-case" do
      @user.email = mixed_case_email
      @user.save
      expect(@user.reload.email).to eq mixed_case_email.downcase
    end
  end
  .
  .
  .
end

What I don't understand is why the 'reload' method is necessary here. Once @user.email is set to the contents of mixed_case_email and saved, aren't @user.reload.email and @user.email the same thing? I took the reload method out just to try it and it didn't seem to change anything with the test.

What am I missing here?

Answer 1

Yes in this case @user.reload.email and @user.email is the same thing. But it's a good practice to use @user.reload.email instead of @user.email to check more accurately what is saved in the database. I mean you don't know if you or someone add some code in after_save which changes it's value then it will not have effect on your tests.

EDIT: And also what you are checking is what's saved in the database so @user.reload.email more accurately reflects what's saved in database then @user.email