CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rubyunit-testingrspecruby-on-rails-5
tlockhart
tlockhart

Reputation: 473

Rspec: How to verify if a record has been deleted?

I have created a simple Rspec test to verfiy if a model created has been deleted. However, the test fails because the model still exists. Can anyone provide any assistance on how to determine if the record was actually deleted?

RSpec.describe Person, type: :model do

let(:person) {
    Person.create(
      name: "Adam",
      serial_number: "1"
    )
  }
  
  it "destroys associated relationships when person destroyed" do
  person.destroy
  expect(person).to be_empty()
  end
end

Upvotes: 25

Views: 11853

Answers (4)

Rimian
Rimian

Reputation: 38418

You could test the behaviour like so:

expect do
  person.destroy
end.to change(person, :persisted?).to false

If you test the behaviour you get two expectations for the price of one! ie: you can assert the before and after in one spec.

Also, the reload will raise an error, you could test that (I had to do this for some associations).

expect do
  person.destroy
  person.reload
end.to raise_error ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound

Upvotes: 1

spickermann
spickermann

Reputation: 106852

You have two choices. You can test that:

  1. A record was removed from the database

    it "removes a record from the database" do
  expect { person.destroy }.to change { Person.count }.by(-1)
end

    But that doesn't tell you which record was removed.

  2. Or that the exact record does not exist in the database anymore

    it "removes the record from the database" do
  person.destroy
  expect { person.reload }.to raise_error(ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound)
end

    or

    it "removes the record from the database" do
  person.destroy
  expect(Person.exists?(person.id)).to be false
end

    But that does not make sure that the record existed before.

A combination of both could be:

    it "removes a record from the database" do
      expect { person.destroy }.to change { Person.count }.by(-1)
      expect { person.reload }.to raise_error(ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound)
    end

Upvotes: 42

EdemaRuh
EdemaRuh

Reputation: 161

I think the following is a nice way to test a specific record has been removed with one expectation, while ensuring your testing the result of the action and not just the state of your test subject.

it "removes the record from the database" do
  expect { person.destroy }.to change { Person.exists?(person.id) }.to(false)
end

Upvotes: 8

Yakov
Yakov

Reputation: 3191

When you delete a record from a database, an object still persists in memory. That's why expect(person).to be_empty() fails.

RSpec has the change matcher. ActiveRecord has the persisted? method. It returns false if a record is not persisted in a database.

it "destroys associated relationships when rtu destroyed" do
  expect { person.destroy }.to change(Person, :count).by(-1)
  expect(person.persisted?).to be_falsey
end

destroy is a method of a framework. As far as I know, you don't need to test its methods.

Upvotes: 5

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