Factory_girl create gives validation error - ruby-on-rails

Question

I'm trying to test a destroy action in my rails application. I use Factory_girl to create objects.
When creating a company object it's mandatory to add a user relation. But this is where I get a fail when I try to create a Company with Factory_girl.
user_spec.rb
describe User do
before(:each) { #user = User.new(email: 'user#example.com') }
subject { #user }
it { should respond_to(:email) }
it { should respond_to(:companies) }
it "#email returns a string" do
expect(#user.email).to match 'user#example.com'
end
describe "company associations" do
let!(:a_company) do
FactoryGirl.create(:company, user: #user)
end
it {should have_many :companies, :dependent => :destroy}
end
end
factory.rb
FactoryGirl.define do
factory :user do
confirmed_at Time.now
name "Test User"
email "test#example.com"
password "please123"
trait :admin do
role 'admin'
end
end
factory :company do
name "Total Inc."
user :user
end
end
model/user.rb
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :companies, dependent: :destroy
enum role: [:user, :vip, :admin]
after_initialize :set_default_role, :if => :new_record?
def set_default_role
self.role ||= :user
end
# Include default devise modules. Others available are:
# :confirmable, :lockable, :timeoutable and :omniauthable
devise :invitable, :database_authenticatable, :registerable, :confirmable,
:recoverable, :rememberable, :trackable, :validatable
end
model/company.rb
class Company < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user
validates :user_id, presence: true
end
The error I get:
Failures:
1) User company associations
Failure/Error: FactoryGirl.create(:company, user: #user)
ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid:
Validation failed: User can't be blank
EDIT
I followed the advise from below and now I can create but get following error:
Failure/Error: it {should have_many :companies, :dependent => :destroy} expected #<User:0x007fc7b7ce08c0> to respond to has_many?

Answer 1

The first error, Validation failed: User can't be blank, is a result of not having saved the #user object. You can fix the error by saving the object before you call create:
let!(:a_company) do
#user.save
FactoryGirl.create(:company, user: #user)
end
The second error, Failure/Error: it {should have_many :companies, :dependent => :destroy} expected #<User:0x007fc7b7ce08c0> to respond to has_many? is a testing error - the production code works fine. To fix your test try one of the following options:
Use Shoulda
it {should have_many(:companies).dependent(:destroy)}
Use FactoryGirl
it 'Expects user to have many companies' do
expect{#user.companies}.to_not raise_error
end