controller's before_save methods aren't called in testing - ruby-on-rails

Question

Following is rails-api only app.
In users_controller.rb
def sign_up
#user = User.new(user_params)
if #user.save
user = {}
user[:name] = #user.name
user[:email] = #user.email
user[:access_token] = #user.auth_token
user[:message] = "Successfully Signed up"
render json: user, status: 200
else
render json: #user.errors, status: :unprocessable_entity
end
end
private
def user_params
params.permit(:name, :email, :password, :password_confirmation)
end
In model/user.rb
attr_accessor :password
before_save :encrypt_password, :generate_token
VALID_EMAIL_REGEX = /\A[\w+\-.]+#[a-z\d\-.]+\.[a-z]+\z/i
validates :email, presence: true, format: { with: VALID_EMAIL_REGEX } , uniqueness: { case_sensitive:false }
validates :password, :confirmation => true, presence: true, :length => {:within => 6..20}
validates_presence_of :password_salt, :password_hash
validates_presence_of :auth_token
In test/controllers/users_controller_test.rb
test "should create user" do
assert_difference('User.count') do
post :sign_up, {email: 'user_3#example.com', name: 'user_3', password: 12345678, password_confirmation: 12345678}
end
end
user model attributes are:
name email password_hash password_salt auth_token
The test above is failing b'cos #user.errors shows
<ActiveModel::Errors:0x007fd826117140 #base=#<User id: nil, name: "user_3", email: "user_3#example.com", password_hash: nil, password_salt: nil, auth_token: nil, created_at: nil, updated_at: nil>, #messages={:password_salt=>["can't be blank"], :password_hash=>["can't be blank"], :auth_token=>["can't be blank"]}>
On #user.save before_save :encrypt_password, :generate_token aren't called.
Using gem 'bcrypt' to store the password as hash.
How do I correct this?

Answer 1

Instead of before_save :encrypt_password, :generate_token use before_validation :encrypt_password, :generate_token. Code in encrypt_password and generate_token is not triggered because you validate model data first and since data is not valid there is no need to trigger before_save because record would not be saved anyway