RSpec ignoring attr_accessor? - ruby-on-rails

Question

I set up a User AR model which has conditional validation which is pretty much identical to the Railscast episode on conditional validation. So basically my User model looks like this:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
attr_accessor :password, :updating_password
validates :password, :presence => true,
:confirmation => true,
:length => { :within => 6..40 },
:if => :should_validate_password?
def should_validate_password?
updating_password || new_record?
end
end
Now in my action where the User can change their password I have the following two lines:
#user.updating_password = true
if #user.update_attributes(params[:user]) ...
so that I flag the validations to be run on the password. In development mode this works great - if the user tries to put in a password that is too short or too long the model does not pass validation. My problem is that for the life of me I can not get my tests for this to pass. Here is my spec:
require 'spec_helper'
describe PasswordsController do
render_views
before(:each) do
#user = Factory(:user)
end
describe "PUT 'update'" do
describe "validations" do
before(:each) do
test_sign_in(#user)
end
it "should reject short passwords" do
short = "short"
old_password = #user.password
#attr2 = { :password => short, :password_confirmation => short }
put :update, :user_id => #user, :old_password => #user.password, :user => #attr2
#user.password.should == old_password
end
it "should reject long passwords" do
long = "a" * 41
old_password = #user.password
#attr2 = { :password => long, :password_confirmation => long }
put :update, :user_id => #user, :old_password => #user.password, :user => #attr2
#user.password.should == old_password
end
end
end
end
When I run these tests I always get the error:
1) PasswordsController PUT 'update' validations should reject short passwords
Failure/Error: #user.password.should == old_password2
expected: "foobar"
got: "short" (using ==)
and of course the error for the password being too long. But should'nt the password be validated as a result of me setting #user.updating_password = true before any save attempts in the controller?

Answer 1

I think the problem isn't the code but what you expect it to do. When you call update_attributes and pass in a bad value, the value is saved into the model object even though the validation fails; the bad value has not been pushed to the database.
I think this makes sense because when the validation fails normally you would show the form again with the error messages and the inputs populated with the bad values that were passed in. In a Rails app, those values usually come from the model object in question. If the bad values weren't saved to the model they would be lost and your form would indicate that the old 'good' values had failed validation.
Instead of performing this check:
#user.password.should == old_password
Maybe try:
#user.errors[:password].should_not == nil
or some other test that makes sense.