Devise user creation fails during Capybara integration testing (and Selenium webdriver)

Question

I'm trying to create a user during an integration test to use for some operations. I'm using devise with :confirmable. The code is the following:

user = User.create({username: "user1", password: "pass1234", password_confirmation: "pass1234", email: "[email protected]"})
user.confirm!
fill_in "Username", :with => user.username
fill_in "Password", :with => user.password
click_button "Sign in"

The problem is that the login fails every time I try it. There are no errors about the user creation, but for some reason the user doesn't seem to "be there" when I try to login. I just get 'Invalid username or password' when I try to sign in. This seems like something to do with the fact that maybe Capybara/Selenium webdriver isn't waiting properly for the database operation to take place before it tries to sign in. If that's the case, how could I test it or fix it?

Is it "wrong" to even be trying to insert into the database during an integration test?

Answer 1

I don't use devise myself so can't really comment on the specifics of the problem you're encountering, but this question caught my eye:

Is it "wrong" to even be trying to insert into the database during an integration test?

Yes, I would say it generally is.

Your integration tests should test your code from the point of view of the user:

• Expectations should only depend on what the user can actually see.
• Actions should correspond only to what the user can actually do.

Inserting something into the database goes beyond the range of actions that the user has at their disposal. It is something for a unit test perhaps, but not for an integration test.

That being said, you could argue that seeding database data is a bit of an exception to this rule, since you're setting up context for your test (see my comments below).