Rspec failing when attempting to find user in DB - ruby-on-rails

Question

I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong in my model spec (user_spec.rb). I'm attempting to check that the authentication method works with a valid password, but something is going wrong in the User.find_by part of the spec I think since it returns nil. I've checked that it responds to :authenticate, :password, and :password_confirmation, which passes (I'll omit that in the code below for the sake of readability).
Here's the failure I'm getting when running the spec:
Failures:
1) User return value of authenticate method with valid password should eq #<User id: 136, fullname: "Sherwood Hickle", email: "jewell.brekke#stokes.net", created_at: "2013-11-06 23:04:35", updated_at: "2013-11-06 23:04:35", password_digest: "$2a$04$O5V2X9sZrl/u2T9W25c3Pu/PU6XaIvtZSIB39Efkid6a...">
Failure/Error: it { should eq found_user.authenticate(user.password) }
expected: #<User id: 136, fullname: "Sherwood Hickle", email: "jewell.brekke#stokes.net", created_at: "2013-11-06 23:04:35", updated_at: "2013-11-06 23:04:35", password_digest: "$2a$04$O5V2X9sZrl/u2T9W25c3Pu/PU6XaIvtZSIB39Efkid6a...">
got: #<User id: nil, fullname: nil, email: nil, created_at: nil, updated_at: nil, password_digest: nil>
(compared using ==)
Diff:
## -1,2 +1,2 ##
-#<User id: 136, fullname: "Sherwood Hickle", email: "jewell.brekke#stokes.net", created_at: "2013-11-06 23:04:35", updated_at: "2013-11-06 23:04:35", password_digest: "$2a$04$O5V2X9sZrl/u2T9W25c3Pu/PU6XaIvtZSIB39Efkid6a...">
+#<User id: nil, fullname: nil, email: nil, created_at: nil, updated_at: nil, password_digest: nil>
# ./spec/models/user_spec.rb:41:in `block (4 levels) in <top (required)>'
user_spec.rb:
require 'spec_helper'
describe User do
describe "return value of authenticate method" do
user = FactoryGirl.create(:user)
let(:found_user) { User.find_by(email: user.email) }
describe "with valid password" do
it { should eq found_user.authenticate(user.password) }
end
describe "with invalid password" do
let(:user_for_invalid_password) { found_user.authenticate("invalid") }
it { should_not eq user_for_invalid_password }
specify { expect(user_for_invalid_password).to be_false }
end
end
end
And I'm also using FactoryGirl to generate the username and email addresses but I don't think it has anything to do with the failure:
require 'faker'
FactoryGirl.define do
factory :user do |u|
u.fullname { Faker::Name.name }
u.email { Faker::Internet.email }
u.password { "foobar" }
u.password_confirmation { "foobar" }
end
end

Answer 1

The problem is the way the spec is set up. You're using an implicit subject which, for this spec, will be User.new. That's why you're seeing a User object with all nil attributes.
Your it clauses should read more like
it { found_user.authenticate(user.password).should eq user }
and
it { user_for_invalid_password.should be_nil }
which actually test the behavior.
UPDATE:
With the introduction in RSpec 3.x of expect syntax as the preferred syntax, this would now be:
it { expect(found_user.authenticate(user.password)).to eq user }
and
it { expect(user_for_invalid_password).to be_nil }