Can't create a user factory in factory girl when using rspec, devise, guard, and spork

Question

I've seen this issue several places, but none of the solutions seem to work.

I have a Rails 3.1 app with the latest versions of guard, spork, factory girl, rspec, and devise.

Whenever I try to create a user factory (the user model is a devise model) then I get this error:

Could not find a valid mapping for #<User...model attributes...>

I'm not sure what the problem is.

I ran rake db:test:prepare. I followed the instructions in this stackoverflow question: "Could not find a valid mapping for #<User ...>" only on second and successive tests

ALso, I attempted the solution in this answer from google groups:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/plataformatec-devise/StpbEsDCec0[1-25]

And, here's all the relevant code:

Guardfile

    # A sample Guardfile
# More info at https://github.com/guard/guard#readme
require 'capybara/rspec'
guard 'spork', :cucumber_env => { 'RAILS_ENV' => 'test' }, :rspec_env => { 'RAILS_ENV' => 'test' } do
  watch('config/application.rb')
  watch('config/environment.rb')
  watch('config/environments/test.rb')
  watch(%r{^config/initializers/.+\.rb$})
  watch('Gemfile')
  watch('Gemfile.lock')
  watch('spec/spec_helper.rb') { :rspec }
  watch('test/test_helper.rb') { :test_unit }
  watch(%r{features/support/}) { :cucumber }
end

guard 'rspec', :version => 2, :cli => '--drb' do
  watch(%r{^spec/.+_spec\.rb$})
  watch(%r{^lib/(.+)\.rb$})     { |m| "spec/lib/#{m[1]}_spec.rb" }
  watch('spec/spec_helper.rb')  { "spec" }

  # Rails example
  watch(%r{^app/(.+)\.rb$})                           { |m| "spec/#{m[1]}_spec.rb" }
  watch(%r{^app/(.*)(\.erb|\.haml)$})                 { |m| "spec/#{m[1]}#{m[2]}_spec.rb" }
  watch(%r{^app/controllers/(.+)_(controller)\.rb$})  { |m| ["spec/routing/#{m[1]}_routing_spec.rb", "spec/#{m[2]}s/#{m[1]}_#{m[2]}_spec.rb", "spec/acceptance/#{m[1]}_spec.rb"] }
  watch(%r{^spec/support/(.+)\.rb$})                  { "spec" }
  watch('config/routes.rb')                           { "spec/routing" }
  watch('app/controllers/application_controller.rb')  { "spec/controllers" }

  # Capybara request specs
  watch(%r{^app/views/(.+)/.*\.(erb|haml)$})          { |m| "spec/requests/#{m[1]}_spec.rb" }

  # Turnip features and steps
  watch(%r{^spec/acceptance/(.+)\.feature$})
  watch(%r{^spec/acceptance/steps/(.+)_steps\.rb$})   { |m| Dir[File.join("**/#{m[1]}.feature")][0] || 'spec/acceptance' }
end
</code>

This is in my spec/factories.rb

FactoryGirl.define do   
 load "#{Rails.root}/app/models/user.rb"  
 factory :user, class: User do |user|
    email '[email protected]'
     password '12345678'
    password_confirmation '12345678'
     companyid 'example_company'   
  end 
end

This is my spec/controllers/api_controller_spec.rb

require 'spec_helper'

describe ApiController do
  it 'verifies company_id through POST to api/company_id' do
    load "#{Rails.root}/app/models/user.rb"
    debugger
    user = FactoryGirl.create(:user)
    post(:get_company_id, {:company_id => 'example_company'})
    response.body.should include('true')
  end
end

And I have this at the end of my config/application.rb

    ActionDispatch::Callbacks.after do
  # Reload the factories
  return unless (Rails.env.development? || Rails.env.test?)

  unless FactoryGirl.factories.blank? # first init will load factories, this should only run on subsequent reloads
    FactoryGirl.factories.clear
    FactoryGirl.find_definitions
  end
end

I'm really desperate for an answer here because otherwise I won't be able to test my User model (which is the most important model I have).

Feel free to comment and ask any questions.

EDIT: code looked funny in places, so I edited it for clarity

UPDATE:

So I tried simplifying everything to get to the core of the problem, and I'm pretty sure that devise and factory girl don't "like" each other. I'm still getting the exact same error whenever I try and create a user factory.

This is my new setup (I reverted to a previous git commit and I no longer have guard or spork).

My factories.rb is exactly the same as Michael Durant's except I have an extra line:

companyid 'example'

That's just a requirement for my app.

My spec_helper.rb requires rubygems and capybara/rspec and that's it.

And this is my spec/models/user_spec.rb

require 'spec_helper'
  describe 'User associations' do

    it 'tests creation of user' do
      debugger
      user = FactoryGirl.create(:user)
      User.count.should be(1)

    end
  end

Also, this is interesting: When I hit that debugger statement and type in

 eval User

It shows the mapping of a valid User.

UPDATE:

So, it's not factory girl that's the problem. It's devise.

This is the new api_controller_spec.rb file and it comes up with the same error of not having a valid mapping of the user.

require 'spec_helper'

describe ApiController do
  it 'verifies company_id through POST to api/company_id' do
    load "#{Rails.root}/app/models/user.rb"
    debugger
    user = User.new
    user.email = '[email protected]'
    user.password = '12345678'
    user.password_confirmation = '12345678'
    user.company_id = 'company'
    user.save
    post(:get_company_id, {:company_id => 'example_company'})
    response.body.should include('true')
  end
end

THere isn't a problem with any other environment as I can create users fine through the console, while a local server is running, or when the code is pushed up to Heroku. It might be rspec or something else, but I'm just not sure at this point.

Michael Durrant Michael Durrant · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-10T17:18:31

I would recommend you simplify things to find the issue. Currently I feel you have too much going on / too many variable factors.

I would recommend the following:

1 Make a new branch. I assume you are using git, if not use it (git init) and make a fork.

2 Remove all the spork and guard stuff. They are helpful in speeding up your tests and running tests in a CI (Continuous Integration), but they are certainly not 'needed' and removing them will help uncover what the real problems are.

3 Set up your user factory correctly. We use this:

FactoryGirl.define do
  sequence :email do |n| 
    "email#{n}@factory.com"
  end 

  factory :user do
    email 
    first_name            { 'First' }
    last_name             { 'Last' }
    password              { "password" }
    password_confirmation { "password" }
    association           :area
    role                  { 'super_user' }
  end 

end

4 Set up your spec_help correctly. We use these requires in our spec_helper.rb:

require 'rubygems'
require 'capybara/rspec'

5 Try to get one user test to pass using spec/models/user_spec.rb, something like:

require 'spec_helper'
describe 'User associations' do
subject { User.new }
it { should validate_presence_of :area }
...

Can't create a user factory in factory girl when using rspec, devise, guard, and spork

2 Answers