Rspec: Result matched using == but still gives "Failed" test result - ruby-on-rails

Question

Good day! I'm practising materials from "Ruby on Rails Tutorial" by Michael Hartle.
Below is the failure message I received, even though the "expected" and "got" seems to match. Would you please give me some suggestion to see how I should approach this issue?
Thank you so much!
Below is the implementation code:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
attr_accessor :password
attr_accessible :name, :emp_id, :dept_id, :password, :password_confirmation
validates :emp_id, :presence => true
validates :name, :presence => true,
:length => { :maximum => 50 }
validates :password, :presence => true,
:confirmation => true,
:length => { :within => 6..40 }
before_save :encrypt_password
def has_password?(submitted_password)
encrypted_password == encrypt(submitted_password)
end
def self.authenticate(emp_id, submitted_password)
user = find_by_emp_id(emp_id)
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
def encrypt(string)
secure_hash("#{salt}--#{string}")
end
def make_salt
secure_hash("#{Time.now.utc}--#{password}")
end
def secure_hash(string)
Digest::SHA2.hexdigest(string)
end
end
Below is the SPEC code:
require 'spec_helper'
describe User do
before(:each) do
#attr = {:name=>"Example", :dept_id=>01, :emp_id=>10, :password=>"pwdabcd", :password_confirmation => "pwdabcd" }
end
.
.
.
describe "password encryption" do
before(:each) do
#user = User.create!(#attr)
end
.
.
.
describe "authenticate method" do
it "should return the user on emp_id password match" do
matching_user = User.authenticate(#attr[:emp_id], #attr[:password])
matching_user.should == #user
end
end
end
end
Thank you so much for your kind assistance.
Have a nice day!

Answer 1

Kevin - when you see a failure message like that, the representation of the object (#<User ...>) is up to the object, so it's possible that it doesn't show you everything that is being compared by ==. My guess is it has something to do with :password_confirmation, but I'm not certain. It doesn't look like the implementation is using it yet, so try removing password_confirmation from #attr in the spec, and from the attr_accessible declaration, and see if it passes.