Why is my rspec test failing?

Question

Here's the test:

        describe "admin attribute" do

        before(:each) do
          @user = User.create!(@attr)
        end

        it "should respond to admin" do
          @user.should respond_to(:admin)
        end

        it "should not be an admin by default" do
          @user.should_not be_admin
        end

        it "should be convertible to an admin" do
          @user.toggle!(:admin)
          @user.should be_admin
        end
      end

Here's the error:

  1) User password encryption admin attribute should respond to admin
 Failure/Error: @user = User.create!(@attr)
 ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid:
   Validation failed: Email has already been taken
 # ./spec/models/user_spec.rb:128

I'm thinking the error might be somewhere in my data populator code:

require 'faker'

namespace :db do
  desc "Fill database with sample data"
  task :populate => :environment do
    Rake::Task['db:reset'].invoke
    admin = User.create!(:name => "Example User",
                 :email => "[email protected]",
                 :password => "foobar",
                 :password_confirmation => "foobar")
    admin.toggle!(:admin)             
    99.times do |n|
      name  = Faker::Name.name
      email = "example-#{n+1}@railstutorial.org"
      password  = "password"
      User.create!(:name => name,
                   :email => email,
                   :password => password,
                   :password_confirmation => password)
    end
  end
end

Please let me know if I should reproduce any more of my code.

UPDATE: Here's where @attr is defined, at the top of the user_spec.rb file:

require 'spec_helper'

describe User do

  before(:each) do
      @attr = { 
        :name => "Example User", 
        :email => "[email protected]",
        :password => "foobar",
        :password_confirmation => "foobar" 
      }
    end

Answer 1

Check to be sure that there isn't a block further up your user_spec.rb that is calling User.create in a before(:each) block with the same email address. If your blocks are nested incorrectly, you'll get this error. For example, in the Rails tutorial, it's easy to accidentally nest your describe "admin attribute" inside your describe "password encryption" block, which uses the same before(:each) code.