Stub model in a view - ruby-on-rails

Question

I wan't to write spec for a view in Rails with Rspec. I wrote this:
require 'spec_helper'
describe "homepage/index.html.erb" do
it 'has list of publications with id #publications' do
render
expect(rendered).to have_selector('ul#publications')
end
it 'has publications on the list' do
assign(:publications, [
stub_model(Publication, content: 'First publication.'),
stub_model(Publication, content: 'Second publication.')
])
render
rendered.should have_content('First publication.')
rendered.should have_content('Second publication.')
end
end
But stub_model seems to be not working.
rspec
.....F.
Failures:
1) homepage/index.html.erb has list of publications with id #publications
Failure/Error: render
ActionView::Template::Error:
undefined method `each' for nil:NilClass
# ./app/views/homepage/index.html.erb:2:in `_app_views_homepage_index_html_erb___3273264012123365698_43368240'
# ./spec/views/homepage/index.html.erb_spec.rb:5:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'
Finished in 0.17634 seconds
7 examples, 1 failure
How can I stub this properly?

Answer 1

The description given in your failure message indicates that your failing on the example above the example with the stubs. In that example, nothing has been assigned to the instance variable #publications, so the view is presumably raising the error you're seeing as a result of executing #publications.each ....
But as #phoet implied, you really should provide the code that is failing.

Answer 2

I don't think that it is a good idea to stub models in such (integration or acceptance) tests.
But if you would like to do it you should stub query to DB (when you are trying to stub assigns). For example you have Publication.all in your action - so you can stub
Publication.stub(all:
[
stub_model(Publication, content: 'First publication.'),
stub_model(Publication, content: 'Second publication.')
])