password Ruby on Rails Tutorial by M. Hartl - ruby-on-rails

Question

I've just started using rails, and decided to follow the "Ruby on Rails Tutorial" by M. Hartl. Seems like a good intro.
Am running into a failed test that's driving me nuts.
I am running rails 3.1.1, with rspec 2.7.0
I have tried modifying the condition, and tests on the "has_password" method work.
The failing test:
1) User password encryption authenticate method should return the user on email/password match
Failure/Error: matching_user.should == #user
expected: #
got: nil (using ==)
# ./spec/models/user_spec.rb:149:in `block (4 levels) in '
The rspec test:
describe User do
before(:each) do
#attr = {:name => 'testing',
:email =>'testing#example.com',
:password => "testtest",
:password_confirmation => "testtest"}
end
...
describe "password encryption" do
before(:each) do
#user = User.create!(#attr)
end
...
describe "authenticate method" do
it "should exist" do
User.should respond_to(:authenticate)
end
it "should return nil on email/password mismatch" do
User.authenticate(#attr[:email], "wrongpass").should be_nil
end
it "should return nil for an email address with no user" do
User.authenticate("bar#foo.com", #attr[:password]).should be_nil
end
it "should return the user on email/password match" do
matching_user = User.authenticate(#attr[:email], #attr[:password])
matching_user.should == #user
end
end
In the User model:
...
def has_password?(submitted_password)
encrypt_password == encrypt(submitted_password)
end
def self.authenticate(email, submitted_password)
user = find_by_email(email) #self.where("email = ?", email)
return nil if user.nil?
return user if user.has_password?(submitted_password)
end
private
def encrypt_password
self.salt = make_salt if new_record?
self.encrypted_password = encrypt(password)
end
I cannot figure out what I'm doing wrong here.

Answer 1

In your failing spec you have
matching_user.should == #user
But #user isn't defined anywhere so it's set to nil.
Edit:
Try adding the following puts into the failing spec and see what results you get in your spec output after running it.
it "should return the user on email/password match" do
matching_user = User.authenticate(#attr[:email], #attr[:password])
puts matching_user # add this
puts #user # and also this
matching_user.should == #user
end