Rspec/Capybara: Devise user 'dissapears' after logging in - ruby-on-rails-4

Question

I'm having a bizarre problem where I create an admin user for an Rspec/Capybara test and the user is mysteriously deleted after logging in. When I run my test, the user is created and successfully logged in. However when Capybara visits the admin_categories_path, the test fails. Rails raises an exception because current_user is not defined. When I insert a binding.pry, I can see that the user exists up until they are logged in, at which point the user disappears from the test database, causing current_user to be undefined, and thereby triggering an exception. I'm at a loss as to how/why this is happening.
UPDATE: I've gotten past the problem of the user being deleted. Now when Capybara sees the admin_categories_path page, category isn't displayed. Inserting a binding.pry reveals that category is present in the database.
When I launch the app and log in manually, I have no problems accessing admin_categories_path.
Here is my spec file:
require 'rails_helper'
feature 'admin edits category', %Q{
As an admin, I want to edit a category or subcategory, so that it better
represents the content under it.
Acceptance Criteria:
* [X] - I can edit the name of a category inline.
* [X] - I can edit the name of a subcategory inline.
} do
let(:admin) do
FactoryGirl.create(:user, admin: true)
end
let(:category) do
FactoryGirl.create(:category)
end
scenario 'admin edits category title', js: true, focus: true do
login_as(admin)
visit admin_categories_path
bip_area category, :name, 'Test Category'
expect(page).to have_content 'Test Category'
end
end
Here is my helper file authentication.rd:
module Helpers
module Authentication
def log_in_as(user)
visit new_user_session_path
within "#new_user" do
fill_in 'user[email]', with: user.email
fill_in 'user[password]', with: user.password
click_on "Log in"
end
end
end
RSpec.configure do |config|
config.include Authentication, :type => :feature
end
end
Here is my user factory:
require 'factory_girl'
FactoryGirl.define do
factory :user do
sequence(:email) {|n| "lafiel.abriel#{n}#abhnation.com" }
username
password 'password'
password_confirmation 'password'
end
factory :category do
sequence(:name) { |n| "Category ##{n}" }
parent_id nil
display_index 1
user
end
sequence :username do |n|
"Lafiel_Abriel_#{n}"
end
end
And here is my application_controller.rd where the exception is triggered:
module Admin
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
before_action :configure_permitted_parameters, if: :devise_controller?
before_action :reject_unless_admin
layout 'admin/layouts/application'
protect_from_forgery with: :exception
helper :avatar, :devise, :admin
protected
def reject_unless_admin
unless current_user && current_user.admin?
raise ActionController::RoutingError.new('404: Not Found')
end
end
def configure_permitted_parameters
devise_parameter_sanitizer.for(:sign_up) << [
:avatar,
:remote_avatar_url,
:email,
:username,
:first_name,
:last_name,
:age,
:website,
:password,
:password_confirmation,
:current_password
]
end
end
end
Any help/insight is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

If I recall correctly, this problem had something to do with the test database schema being out of sync with the development database. Try running rake db:test:prepare to ensure your test schema matches your development schema.
In my specific case, I had a two problems to overcome.
The first problem occurred when I created a category and an admin in a let block. Those needed to be placed in a before block so that they were created before the test executed. When I placed those variables in let blocks, they were not being created until the first time they were called in the test. So when I logged in as an admin, the admin variable was being passed to my login_as helper method before it was saved to the database. The same is true for the category variable.
This code doesn't work for me:
let(:admin) do
FactoryGirl.create(:user, admin: true)
end
let(:category) do
FactoryGirl.create(:category)
end
scenario 'admin edits category title', js: true, focus: true do
login_as(admin)
visit admin_categories_path
bip_area category, :name, 'Test Category'
expect(page).to have_content 'Test Category'
end
This is solution I used to overcome the first problem:
before(:each) do
#admin = FactoryGirl.create(:user, admin: true)
#category = FactoryGirl.create(:category, user: #admin)
end
scenario 'admin edits category title', js: true do
skip "Doesn't work yet."
login_as(#admin)
visit admin_categories_path
wait_for_ajax
bip_text #category, :name, 'Test Category'
expect(page).to have_content 'Test Category'
end
The second problem is that when my test hits the admin/categories_controller.rb, Category.all returns an empty array, even though #category.save! and #category.valid? return true when I test my before block. I was never able to find a solution to the problem and ended up putting the test on ice.
I think part of the problem is that the documentation for the Best-in-Place gem is not very good. I used it at the time because it was an easy solution to my problem. Going forward though, I would use something like angular for this use-case. The documentation is much better and it's not a black box like a lot of gems are.

Answer 2

I'm not sure what bip_area does, but since your test says that it's editing a category I assume you are expecting the category to be present on the page when you visit admin_categories_path. When you visit that path however category has not yet been created since you are using 'let' which is lazily evaluated (created at time of first use of the variable), so it would not be shown on the screen for you to edit. Using binding.pry and then looking at that variable would actually create it, so it might be confusing you into thinking it was there. You can use 'let!' instead which will force the variable to be created before each test instead of lazily evaluating it.