Getting "ActiveRecord::UnknownAttributeError: unknown attribute: email_confirmation" Error with rspec

Question

I am running into this error when running my tests. I have checked to make sure all the `email_confirmation`s are spelled correctly and (unless I am crazy) they are. I'm a bit of a Rails noob, so it could be something simple. User Model ``` class User < ActiveRecord::Base attr_accessible :email, :email_confirmation, :first_name, :last_name, :password, :password_confirmation has_secure_password before_save { |user| user.email = email.downcase } validates :first_name, presence: true, length: { maximum: 25 } validates :last_name, presence: true, length: { maximum: 25 } VALID_EMAIL_REGEX = /\A[\w+\-.]+@[a-z\d\-.]+\.[a-z]+\z/i validates :email, presence: true, format: { with: VALID_EMAIL_REGEX }, uniqueness: { case_sensitive: false } validates :email_confirmation, presence: true validates :password, presence: true, length: { maximum: 6 } validates :password_confirmation, presence: true end ``` Rspec tests ``` require 'spec_helper' describe User do before { @user = User.new(email: "user@exa…

Accepted Answer

You're getting `UnknownAttributeError` because you don't have a column in your `users` table called `email_confirmation`. By default, ActiveRecord will look for DB columns named the same as the attributes you use to construct the model, but this line is trying to construct a User with an attribute the database doesn't know about:

```
  before { @user = User.new(email: "user@example.com",
                        first_name: "John", last_name: "Smith",
                        password: "foobar", password_confirmation: "foobar",
                        email_confirmation: "user@example.com") }
```

Are you really intending to save the email confirmation in the database, or are you just wanting to check that it matches email before saving it? I assume the latter, and Rails actually has built-in support for doing just that:

```
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  validates :email, :confirmation => true
  validates :email_confirmation, :presence => true
end
```

See more details on the Rails Guide to Validations, or the `validates_confirmation_of` API docs. (And you'll probably need to do the same thing for `:password_confirmation`.)

Getting "ActiveRecord::UnknownAttributeError: unknown attribute: email_confirmation" Error with rspec

Solution

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