Why is this Rspec test returning "email already taken"

Question

This is my spec file, when adding test for context "not as singable updates user balance" I get the error below.

require 'spec_helper'

describe Sale do 

  context 'after_commit' do

    context 'assignable' do 
      sale = FactoryGirl.create(:sale, earned_cents: 10, assignable: true)
      after { sale.run_callbacks(:commit) }

      it 'updates user balance' do
        sale.user.balance.should == sale.earned
      end
    end

    context 'not assignable' do 
      sale = FactoryGirl.create(:sale, earned_cents: 10, assignable: false)
      after { sale.run_callbacks(:commit) }

      it 'does not updates user balance' do
        sale.user.balance.should_not == sale.earned
      end
    end

  end 
end

And the factories

require 'faker'

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :user do
    email Faker::Internet.email
    password "mypassword"
  end

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :sale do
    earned_cents 5
    user
  end
end

On /spec/spec_helper.rb I also had this

require 'database_cleaner'
RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.before(:suite) do
    DatabaseCleaner.strategy = :transaction
    DatabaseCleaner.clean_with(:truncation)
  end

  config.before(:each) do
    DatabaseCleaner.start
  end

  config.after(:each) do
    DatabaseCleaner.clean
  end
end

And this is the error I'm getting.

`save!': Validation failed: Email has already been taken (ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid)

I guess its related to the user reference inside Sale Factory, but I have no idea why it is not generating a new user for the second test or deleting it from the database. Any idea?

Answer 1

In your User factory, try this instead:

factory :user do
  email { Faker::Internet.email }
  password "mypassword"
end

Why you Must Enclose In Curly Brackets: to Avoid Caching Values

The factory(:user) block is run when defining the factory, and not every time a record is created. So if Factory::Internet.email evaluated to [email protected] the first time, then the factory would attempt to create all subsequent users with that very same email!) (as per @kristinalim, Edited for grammar)