Need help Rspec test

Question

I'm trying to learn RSpec and writing test for CRUD actions. Here is my controller:

class ArticlesController < ApplicationController

  respond_to :html, :json

  before_filter :authenticate_user!

  # GET /articles
  # GET /articles.json
  def index
    @articles = current_user.articles.all
    respond_with(@articles)
  end

  # GET /articles/1
  # GET /articles/1.json
  def show
    @article = current_user.articles.find(params[:id])
    respond_with @article
  end

  # GET /articles/new
  # GET /articles/new.json
  def new
    @article = current_user.articles.build
    respond_with @article
  end

  # GET /articles/1/edit
  def edit
    @article = get_article(params[:id])
  end

  # POST /articles
  # POST /articles.json
  def create
    @article = current_user.articles.build(params[:article])
    flash[:notice] = "Article was successfully created!" if @article.save
    respond_with(@article, location: articles_path)
  end

  # PUT /articles/1
  # PUT /articles/1.json
  def update
    @article = get_article(params[:id])
    if @article.update_attributes(params[:article])
      flash[:notice] = "Article was successfully updated."
    end
    respond_with @article
  end

  # DELETE /articles/1
  # DELETE /articles/1.json
  def destroy
    @article = get_article(params[:id])
    @article.destroy
    respond_with @article
  end

  private
  def get_article(article_id)
    current_user.articles.find(article_id)
  end
end

And my articles rspec:

describe ArticlesController do

  def valid_attributes
    {
      :title => "Introducting Node.js",
      :content => "Node.js is an event-driven...."
    }
  end

  let(:article) do
    build(:article, valid_attributes)
  end

  describe "PUT 'update'" do

    before(:each) do
      controller.stub_chain(:current_user, :articles, :build) { article }
    end

    context "success" do
      before(:each) do
        article.should_receive(:update_attributes).and_return(true)
        put :update, id: article.id
      end

      it "sets notice" do
        flash[:notice].should eq("Article was successfully updated!")
      end
    end
  end

  describe "POST 'create'" do

    before(:each) do
      controller.stub_chain(:current_user, :articles, :build) { article }
    end

    context "success" do
      before(:each) do
        article.should_receive(:save).and_return(true)
        post :create
      end

      it "sets notice" do
        flash[:notice].should eq("Article was successfully created!")
      end

      it "should redirect to article path" do
        response.should redirect_to(articles_path)
      end
    end

    context "failure" do
      before(:each) do
        article.should_receive(:save).and_return(false).as_null_object
        post :create
      end

      it "assigns @article" do
        assigns(:article).should == article
      end
    end
  end
end

My question is when I run rspec on PUT UPDATE test is failed. But POST test is passed. I don't have any idea what is going on. I'm using Rails 3.1.1 with omniauth. I'm not using Devise. Here is the test result. Why? Please help me guys?

Failures:

  1) ArticlesController PUT 'update' success sets notice
     Failure/Error: put :update, id: article.id
     NoMethodError:
       undefined method `find' for #<Object:0xa3cfd20>
     # ./app/controllers/articles_controller.rb:61:in `get_article'
     # ./app/controllers/articles_controller.rb:44:in `update'
     # ./spec/controllers/articles_controller_spec.rb:46:in `block (4 levels) in <top (required)>'

Finished in 24.09 seconds
5 examples, 1 failure

Answer 1

Here's the thing.

When you're stubbing, you're just saying "if this method chain is called, return this." There are two issues with that. 1) the code doesn't ever call build, and 2) there's no actual associations.

I believe you'd need to stub current_user.articles to return an article collection. The problem is that AR associations aren't actual arrays, they're proxies.

See this SO post and this SO post for more details. A regular array won't treat the find method like the AR method it really is, and you're not returning a single article.

Since you have the article ID, you could just return that particular article, but your goal is to return that article from within the user's articles to avoid updating someone else's (I assume).

This SO post may also help, and this.

In other words, you may want a real user there, with real associated objects, so things like find will work w/o hackery.

(I fully recognize this isn't a real answer; I've never done this via stubbing, I've used factories/etc.)