How to write an RSpec test for a simple PUT update?

Question

I'm trying to solidify my understanding of rails and the BDD workflow, so I wanted to start small by creating one of those mini-blogs, but with rspec. Right now I have an ArticlesController and Article model, and associated rspec files. Article is very simple, has just title:string and content:text, and the ArticlesController is RESTful - although I hand wrote the MCV for Article, it's basically the same as if I used a scaffold to create it.

However I don't really know what I'm doing when it comes to writing a test in rspec for the PUT update. I'm using Factory Girl to create the article object, and so far my code looks like:

#factories.rb FactoryGirl.define do   factory :article do   title "a title"   content "hello world" end  #articles_controller_spec.rb before(:each) do   @article = Factory(:article) end  describe "PUT 'update/:id'" do   it "allows an article to be updated" do     @attr = { :title => "new title", :content => "new content" }     put :update, :id => @article.id, :article => @attr     response.should be_successful   end end 

However I keep getting:

Failures: 1) ArticlesController PUT 'update/:id' allows an article to be updated    Failure/Error: response.should be_successful      expected successful? to return true, got false 

What am I doing wrong? And am I using the right tools? When I run my test server, New, Edit, Destroy all work as I would expect them to, so I'm guessing this is a problem with my understanding of RSpec. Let me know if I'm wrong - thanks!

Answer 1

You forgot to .reload your @article, and on update action your response most likely perform redirect, so

RSpec 2:

describe "PUT update/:id" do   let(:attr) do      { :title => 'new title', :content => 'new content' }   end    before(:each) do     put :update, :id => @article.id, :article => attr     @article.reload   end    it { response.should redirect_to(@article) }   it { @article.title.should eql attr[:title] }   it { @article.content.should eql attr[:content] } end 

Rspec 3:

describe "PUT update/:id" do   let(:attr) do      { :title => 'new title', :content => 'new content' }   end    before(:each) do     put :update, :id => @article.id, :article => attr     @article.reload   end    it { expect(response).to redirect_to(@article) }   it { expect(@article.title).to eql attr[:title] }   it { expect(@article.content).to eql attr[:content] } end