CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsactiverecordrspecmigration
berkes
berkes

Reputation: 27603

How to make rspec pick up defaults for attributes, set in the schema of a Model

When setting a default for a column in a migration, Rails picks this up just fine: 

def change
  add_column :account, :role, :string, default: 'mother'
  Account.update_all(role: 'mother')
end

Accessing this in e.g. rails console works as expected: 

Account.new.role #=> 'mother'

But, for some reason, not in rspec specs:

expect(Account.new.role).to equal 'mother' #fail
expect(Account.new.role).to not_be_nil     #fail

I can imagine that rspec model specs try to avoid loading the schema and therefore know nothing about the default for an attribute. I am not sure if this is the reason though.

Is there some setting, magic trick or other call that will allow me to test the behaviour of such defaults.

Note: I am aware of the 'after_initialize' trick or even entire gems to set defaults, but this setting of a default in the migration seems the cleanest for me. Still, I'd like to test this.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 577

Answers (1)

konole
konole

Reputation: 766

You can not keep symbols in the database. Rails automatically convert numbers & symbols in the string column by calling #to_s on them.

If you want to receive symbol for a database column then you should override the method in your model like this:

def role
  read_attribute(:role).try(:to_sym)
end

Edit:

Have you run migrations for test environment? either RAILS_ENV=test rake db:schema:load or rake db:test:prepare. RSpec loads whole schema, otherwise you wouldn't be able to create any new instances of models using ActiveRecord

Upvotes: 1

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