How to use data from one factory in another factory - ruby-on-rails

Question

I'm trying to test my app so that when a user votes for a certain kind of food, both the count of user.votes goes up as well as food.votes. As of now I can't that to happen, and I'm not sure if I've written my tests wrong or have set up a factory that will not make it possible for the tests to pass. It works when I test manually in the console, so I know that it does function, but the tests do not agree.
FactoryGirl.define do
factory :vote do |f|
f.user_id user
f.food_id food
end
end
def create
#vote = Vote.new(vote_params)
if #vote.save
flash[:notice] = "Thanks for voting!"
else
flash[:notice] = "Something went wrong"
end
end
before(:each) do
#user = create(:user)
sign_in(#user)
#food = create(:food)
end
describe "POST #create" do
context "with valid attributes" do
it "creates a new vote" do
vote_params = FactoryGirl.attributes_for(:vote)
expect { post :create, params: { vote: vote_params } }.to change(Vote, :count).by(1)
end
it "Updates #user vote count" do
vote_params = FactoryGirl.attributes_for(:vote)
expect { post :create, params: { vote: vote_params } }.to change(#user.votes, :count).by(1)
end
it "Updates #food vote count" do
vote_params = FactoryGirl.attributes_for(:vote)
expect { post :create, params: { vote: vote_params } }.to change(#food.votes, :count).by(1)
end
end
end
Failures:
1) VotesController POST #create with valid attributes Updates #user vote count
Failure/Error: expect { post :create, params: { vote: vote_params } }.to change(#user.votes, :count).by(1)
expected #count to have changed by 1, but was changed by 0
# ./spec/controllers/votes_controller_spec.rb:27:in `block (4 levels) in <top (required)>'
2) VotesController POST #create with valid attributes Updates #food vote count
Failure/Error: expect { post :create, params: { vote: vote_params } }.to change(#food.votes, :count).by(1)
expected #count to have changed by 1, but was changed by 0
# ./spec/controllers/votes_controller_spec.rb:32:in `block (4 levels) in <top (required)>'
Finished in 2.99 seconds (files took 4.66 seconds to load)
36 examples, 2 failures
Failed examples:
rspec ./spec/controllers/votes_controller_spec.rb:25 # VotesController POST #create with valid attributes Updates #user vote count
rspec ./spec/controllers/votes_controller_spec.rb:30 # VotesController POST #create with valid attributes Updates #food vote count

Answer 1

Ok, confident enough to take a guess. The issue, I think, is that vote_params is coming from a factory (probably with hard-coded values for user_id/food_id) - but not the real #user and #food that you are testing against. You need to put these values into your vote_params can I suggest something like the following:
context "with valid attributes" do
# Set vote-params from factory, then merge in the #user/#food ids
let(:vote_params) { FactoryGirl.attributes_for(:vote).merge(:user_id => #user.id, :vote_id => #vote.id) }
it "creates a new vote" do
expect { post :create, params: { vote: vote_params } }.to change(Vote, :count).by(1)
end
it "Updates #user vote count" do
expect { post :create, params: { vote: vote_params } }.to change(#user.votes, :count).by(1)
end
it "Updates #food vote count" do
expect { post :create, params: { vote: vote_params } }.to change(#food.votes, :count).by(1)
end
end