Ruby on Rails Tutorial Chapter 10 Exercise RSpec Failures - ruby-on-rails

Question

I'm working on the exercises from Chapter 10 of the Rails Tutorial and ran in to a snag with the exercise that has me ensure that an admin user can't delete themselves. My initial idea was to simply check the id of the current user and compare it against params[:id] to make sure that they're not equal. My destroy action in my Users controller looked like this:
def destroy
if current_user.id == params[:id].to_i
flash[:notice] = "You cannot delete yourself."
else
User.find(params[:id]).destroy
flash[:success] = "User destroyed."
end
redirect_to users_path
end
This works perfectly when I test it manually in the app but 3 of my RSpec tests fail with the same "undefined method 'to_i'" error (as seen below):
1) UsersController DELETE 'destroy' as an admin user should destory the user
Failure/Error: delete :destroy, :id => #user
NoMethodError:
undefined method `to_i' for #<User:0x000001032de188>
# ./app/controllers/users_controller.rb:48:in `destroy'
# ./spec/controllers/users_controller_spec.rb:310:in `block (5 levels) in <top (required)>'
# ./spec/controllers/users_controller_spec.rb:309:in `block (4 levels) in <top (required)>'
2) UsersController DELETE 'destroy' as an admin user should redirect to the users page
Failure/Error: delete :destroy, :id => #user
NoMethodError:
undefined method `to_i' for #<User:0x000001032b5850>
# ./app/controllers/users_controller.rb:48:in `destroy'
# ./spec/controllers/users_controller_spec.rb:315:in `block (4 levels) in <top (required)>'
3) UsersController DELETE 'destroy' as an admin user should not allow you to destroy self
Failure/Error: delete :destroy, :id => #admin
NoMethodError:
undefined method `to_i' for #<User:0x0000010327e350>
# ./app/controllers/users_controller.rb:48:in `destroy'
# ./spec/controllers/users_controller_spec.rb:321:in `block (5 levels) in <top (required)>'
# ./spec/controllers/users_controller_spec.rb:320:in `block (4 levels) in <top (required)>'
If I use the params[:id] to find the user and compare it to the current_user like I have below then it works both in the app and in RSpec.
def destroy
if current_user == User.find(params[:id])
flash[:notice] = "You cannot delete yourself."
else
User.find(params[:id]).destroy
flash[:success] = "User destroyed."
end
redirect_to users_path
end
Why would there be a problem in RSpec with the "to_i" method? If anyone is wondering I was leaning toward that approach because I thought it would best to simply compare the current user id to the id of the user targeted for deletion (via the params[:id]) instead of hitting the db to "find" the user.
For reference this is my RSpec test:
describe "DELETE 'destroy'" do
before(:each) do
#user = Factory(:user)
end
...
describe "as an admin user" do
before(:each) do
#admin = Factory(:user, :email => "admin#example.com", :admin => true)
test_sign_in(#admin)
end
it "should destory the user" do
lambda do
delete :destroy, :id => #user
end.should change(User, :count).by(-1)
end
it "should redirect to the users page" do
delete :destroy, :id => #user
response.should redirect_to(users_path)
end
it "should not allow you to destroy self" do
lambda do
delete :destroy, :id => #admin
end.should change(User, :count).by(0)
response.should redirect_to(users_path)
flash[:notice].should =~ /cannot delete yourself/
end
end
end
Any help would be appreciated!

Answer 1

In your specs, try using #user.id instead of #user on your :id parameter (I realize the Tutorial says to just use #user, but something may be going on where the id isn't being properly extracted):
delete :destroy, :id => #user.id
But you may consider restructuring to something like this:
#user = User.find(params[:id])
if current_user == #user
flash[:notice] = "You cannot delete yourself."
else
#user.destroy
flash[:success] = "User destroyed."
end