Rails 3.2.8 + FactoryGirl + RABL: Differences on how datetime are returned

Question

I have the following factory:

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :location do |f|
    f.descrizione { Faker::Company.name }
    f.indirizzo { 'Yellow submarine lane, 1'}
    f.citta { 'Nowhereland' }
    f.cap { '0100' }
    f.provincia { 'ZZ' }
  end
end

and the following spec:

describe "/api/v1/clients/:client_id/locations.json", :type => :api do
  let(:client) { FactoryGirl.create(:client) }
  let(:url) { "/api/v1/locations" }

  describe 'Locations index' do
   it_behaves_like "requires a client"

   def do_verb
     get url+".json", client_id: client.id
   end

   describe "fetches all locations for a given client" do
    it "returns an empty array of locations when client has no locations" do
      do_verb
      body = JSON.parse(last_response.body)
      body.should eq([])
    end

    it "returns an array with client's locations" do
      location = FactoryGirl.create(:location)
      client.locations << location
      client.save
      do_verb
      body = JSON.parse(last_response.body)
      location_params = location.attributes
      body.should eq([location_params])
    end
  end
end
...

Now, everything works as expected (no pun intented) except the comparisons between :created_at and :updated_at fields of what's inside the body and what comes from FactoryGirl (location_params).

The error I get back from running the spec follows:

   Diff:
   @@ -5,6 +5,6 @@
      "cap"=>"01000",
      "citta"=>"Nowhereland",
      "provincia"=>"ZZ",
   -  "created_at"=>Sat, 15 Sep 2012 16:39:13 UTC +00:00,
   -  "updated_at"=>Sat, 15 Sep 2012 16:39:13 UTC +00:00}]
   +  "created_at"=>"2012-09-15T16:39:13Z",
   +  "updated_at"=>"2012-09-15T16:39:13Z"}]

As you can see both created_at and updated_at in response's body is represented differently from what gets returned by FactoryGirl.

What's it that I'm obviously missing here?

Thanks in advance for your help

Answer 1

JSON doesn't have a date/time type - all date/times are represented as strings in ISO8601 format. Therefore, once the data has been encoded and decoded from JSON, you end up comparing a DateTime object with a string.