DOM traversal in Capybara testing - ruby-on-rails

Question

Quick summary: why can't capybara find the .admin-edit class?
So, I have built a site where there are published and unpublished articles and only the published articles are seen by guests while admins can see everything. Login is handled through devise and a simple erb expression determines if an article is shown or 'published'.
I list articles on the index action of my articles controller and render a partial to display the articles.
<% if article.published %>
<dl class="individual-article">
<dt><%= article.title %>
<% if current_user.try(:admin) %>
| <span class="admin-edit"><%= link_to 'Edit', edit_article_path(article) %></span>
<% end %><br>
<span class="article-tags">
<%= raw article.tags.map(&:name).map { |t| link_to t, tag_path(t) }.join(', ') %></span>
</dt>
<dd><%= truncate(article.body.html_safe, length: 200) %>
<%= link_to 'more', article_path(article) %>
</dd>
</dl>
<% end %>
This works as expected but I cannot test for it correctly. In particular, it returns false on expecting to find 'Edit' if the user is admin.
Here is my sign_in_spec:
require 'rails_helper'
RSpec.describe "SignIns", type: :request do
describe "the sign in path" do
let(:user) { FactoryGirl.create(:user) }
let(:admin) { FactoryGirl.create(:admin) }
let(:article) { FactoryGirl.create(:article) }
let(:published) { FactoryGirl.create(:published) }
it "lets a valid user login and redirects to main page" do
visit '/users/sign_in'
fill_in 'user_email', :with => admin.email
fill_in 'user_password', :with => admin.password
click_button 'Log in'
expect(current_path).to eq '/'
expect(page).to have_css('span.admin-edit')
end
end
And here is my article factory:
FactoryGirl.define do
factory :article do
title 'Title'
body 'Content'
factory :published do
published true
end
end
And here is my user factory:
FactoryGirl.define do
factory :user do
email 'user#gmail.com'
password 'password'
factory :admin do
admin true
end
end
end
Here is the error:
1) SignIns the sign in path lets a valid user login and redirects to main page
Failure/Error: expect(page).to have_css('span.admin-edit')
expected #has_css?("span.admin-edit") to return true, got false
# ./spec/requests/sign_ins_spec.rb:18:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'
I have tried the following:
Eliminating the extra article if rspec had a problem with multiple classes
Changing have_css to have_selector and selecting the anchor tag
Drawing out the entire DOM root from html body ...
Checking if it was working outside of the spec by manually logging in as user with admin privs -> it does.
Tried deleting unpublished vs published article distinction but still fails.
Tried removing erb condition to check if article is published in view but still fails.
Tried making sure it wasn't loading via ajax (has backup in will_paginate) but fails.
What am I doing wrong?
Edit
It now works if I avoid using the FactoryGirl importing:
#article = Article.create(title: 'Title', body: 'body', published: true)
Instead of
let(:published) { FactoryGirl.create(:published) }
No idea why.

Answer 1

RSpec lazily assigns let variables, so at the time you display your page, neither the published nor unpublished articles exist. You need to use let! or before or otherwise ensure the objects get created prior to display of your page.