FactoryGirl attributes_for and associations

Question

I'm trying to test associations in my Rspec controller tests. Problem is that Factory doesn't produce associations for the attributes_for command. So, following the suggestion in this post I defined my validate attributes in my controller spec like so:

def valid_attributes
   user = FactoryGirl.create(:user)
   country = FactoryGirl.create(:country)
   valid_attributes = FactoryGirl.build(:entitlement, user_id: user.id, country_id: country.id, client: true).attributes.symbolize_keys
   puts valid_attributes
end

However, when the controller test runs I still get the following errors:

 EntitlementsController PUT update with valid params assigns the requested entitlement as @entitlement
    Failure/Error: entitlement = Entitlement.create! valid_attributes
    ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid:
    Validation failed: User can't be blank, Country can't be blank, Client  & expert are both FALSE. Please specify either a client or expert relationship, not both

Yet the the valid_attributes output in the terminal clearly shows that each valid_attribute has a user_id, country_id and expert is set to true:

  {:id=>nil, :user_id=>2, :country_id=>1, :client=>true, :expert=>false, :created_at=>nil, :updated_at=>nil}

Answer 1

It looks like you have a puts as the last line in your valid_attributes method, which returns nil. That's why when you pass it to Entitlement.create! you get an error about user and country being blank, etc.

Try removing that puts line, so you have just:

def valid_attributes
  user = FactoryGirl.create(:user)
  country = FactoryGirl.create(:country)
  FactoryGirl.build(:entitlement, user_id: user.id, country_id: country.id, client: true).attributes.symbolize_keys
end

Incidentally, you shouldn't really be creating users and countries and then passing their ids to build, you can do that in the factory itself just by including lines with user and country in the entitlement factory. When you run FactoryGirl.build(:entitlement) it will then automatically create them (but not actually save the entitlement record).