rspec test failure when switching from initializing attributes to Factory

Question

This makes no sense to me, hope someone can help. I'm getting a single test failure when creating a user using a factory (seemingly similar tests pass). In my user_spec.rb test file, the user was originally created like this. Using this initialization approach, all tests pass. USER CREATION user_spec.rb (without factory) ``` describe User do before do @user = User.new(name: "Example User", email: "user@example.com", password: "foobar", password_confirmation: "foobar", username: "username") end ``` Most of the other tests for the app use factories. So, decided to replace the above with call to factory. user_spec.rb (with factory) ``` describe User do before do @user = FactoryGirl.create(:user) end ``` FACTORY The factory looks like this. factories.rb ``` FactoryGirl.define do factory :user do sequence(:name) { |n| "Person #{n}" } sequence(:email) { |n| "person_#{n}@example.com" } password "foobar" password_confirmation "foobar" sequence(:username) { |n| "username_#{n}" } ``` TEST FAILU…

Accepted Answer

The factory puts the record in the DB. User.new doesn't until it is saved. The original test doesn't check if user_with_same_email gets created, rather that 'it' (subject { @user }) can't be created because the email exists. After making your change to the @user, I had to rewrite the test:

```
describe "when email address is already taken" do
  let (:user_with_same_email)  { @user.dup }

specify { user_with_same_email.should_not be_valid }
end
```

rspec test failure when switching from initializing attributes to Factory

Solution

Problem