rails/rspec: Fabricator - testing associations (ActiveModel::MissingAttributeError) - ruby-on-rails

Question

I am writing tests for my models and came across an error I can't seem to resolve. I'm using rspec and Fabricator. Things work fine when being tested in isolation but when I try to test for associations I get an ActiveModel::MissingAttributeError.
models/user.rb
class User < ApplicationRecord
...
validates :email, uniqueness: true, presence: true
belongs_to :company, required: false
end
models/company.rb
class Company < ApplicationRecord
validates :organisation_number, uniqueness: true, presence: true
has_many :users, dependent: :destroy
end
schema
create_table "companies", force: :cascade do |t|
t.string "organisation_number"
...
end
create_table "users", id: :serial, force: :cascade do |t|
t.string "email", default: "", null: false
...
t.bigint "company_id"
t.index ["company_id"], name: "index_users_on_company_id"
...
end
fabricators/user_fabricator.rb
Fabricator :user do
email { Faker::Internet.email }
password '123456'
confirmed_at Time.now
end
fabricators/company_fabricator.rb
Fabricator :company do
organisation_number { Faker::Company.swedish_organisation_number }
end
spec/user_spec.rb (first test passes, the second fails)
describe User do
context '#create' do
it 'Creates a user when correct email and password provided' do
user = Fabricate(:user)
expect(user).to be_valid
end
it 'Lets assign a company to user' do
company = Fabricate(:company)
expect(Fabricate.build :user, company: company).to be_valid
end
end
end
I also tried adding a company straight to the User fabricator, like so (which seems to me like a correct implementation of the documentation):
Fabricator :user do
email { Faker::Internet.email }
password '123456'
confirmed_at Time.now
company
end
and the other way around, adding users to the Company fabricator, like so:
Fabricator :company do
organisation_number { Faker::Company.swedish_organisation_number }
users(count: 3) { Fabricate(:user) }
end
but both approaches left me with the same error:
User#create Lets assign a company to user
Failure/Error: company = Fabricate(:company)
ActiveModel::MissingAttributeError: can't write unknown attribute 'company_id'
Any suggestions on what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

I would write up my own answer but I am not sure that I could describe it better than RSpec already has so this is taken directly from Here:
Rails 4.x ActiveRecord::Migration pending migration checks
If you are not using ActiveRecord you do not need to worry about these
settings.
Users of Rails 4.x can now take advantage of improved schema migration and sync abilities. Prior to RSpec 3, users were required to manually run migrations in both the development and test environments. Additionally, the behavior differed depending on if the specs were run via rake or via the standalone rspec command.
With the release of Rails 4, new APIs have been exposed on
ActiveRecord::Migration. This allows RSpec to take advantage of these new
standard migration checks, mirroring behavior across the board.
Rails 4.0.x
Add the following to the top of the rails_helper file after Rails has
been required:
ActiveRecord::Migration.check_pending!
This will raise an exception if there are any pending schema changes. Users will still be required to manually keep the development and test environments in sync.
Rails 4.1+
With this release there was an exciting new feature. Users no longer need to keep the development and test environments in sync. To take advantage of this add the following to the top of the rails_helper file after Rails has been required:
ActiveRecord::Migration.maintain_test_schema!
What this does is that rather than just raising when the test schema has
pending migrations, Rails will try to load the schema. An exception will
now only be raised if there are pending migrations afterwards the schema
has been loaded.
There are a few caveates to be aware of when using this:
Migrations still need to be run manually; although now this only has to be done in the 'development' environment
An exception will be raised If the schema has not been initialized. The exception will provide instructions stating rake db:migrate needs to be run.
It is possible to opt-out of checking for pending migrations. Since this is
actually a feature of Rails, the change needs to be done as part of the Rails
configuration. To do this, add the following to your config/environments/test.rb file:
config.active_record.maintain_test_schema = false
New RSpec projects don't need to worry about these commands as the rails generate rspec:install will add them automatically.