Why use 'reload' method after saving object? (Hartl Rails Tut 6.30)

Question

I'm working on the exercises for chapter 6 of Hartl's Rails 4 Tutorial. The first exercise tests to make sure that user email addresses are down-cased correctly:

require 'spec_helper'  describe User do   .   .   .   describe "email address with mixed case" do     let(:mixed_case_email) { "[email protected]" }      it "should be saved as all lower-case" do       @user.email = mixed_case_email       @user.save       expect(@user.reload.email).to eq mixed_case_email.downcase     end   end   .   .   . end 

What I don't understand is why the 'reload' method is necessary here. Once @user.email is set to the contents of mixed_case_email and saved, aren't @user.reload.email and @user.email the same thing? I took the reload method out just to try it and it didn't seem to change anything with the test.

What am I missing here?

Answer 1

Yes in this case @user.reload.email and @user.email is the same thing. But it's good practice to use @user.reload.email instead of @user.email to check what is exactly saved in the database i mean you don't know if you or someone add some code in after_save which changes it's value then it will not have effect on your tests.

EDIT: And also what you are checking is what's saved in the database so @user.reload.email exactly reflects what's saved in database then @user.email