赋值返回nil rspec rails

Question

I'm trying to test the put method in a customers controller. The problem is that assigns(:customer) always returns nil so that first test fails. The second test, however, works perfectly, so I don't see why the first test fails, since the correct customer is retrieved from the params inside the update method.

  describe "PUT #update" do
    before :each do
      @customer = create(:customer, user: @user)
    end

    context "with valid attributes" do
    it "locates the requested customer" do
      put :update, id: @customer.id, customer: FactoryGirl.attributes_for(:customer).merge({user_id: @user.id})
      assigns(:customer).should eq @customer
    end

    it "should save customer to the database" do
      put :update, id: @customer, customer: {name: 'lorem', mail: 'lorem@gmail.com', address: 'lorem_address', phone:@customer.phone, user_id: @customer.user.id}
      @customer.reload
      expect(@customer.name).to eq 'lorem'
      expect(@customer.mail).to eq 'lorem@gmail.com'
      expect(@customer.address).to eq 'lorem_address'
    end
  end


FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :user do
    email {Faker::Internet.email}
    password {Faker::Internet.password(10)}
  end
end


FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :customer do
    association :user
    name Faker::Name.name
    sequence(:mail) {|i| "example#{i}@example.com"}
    address Faker::Address.street_address
    phone Faker::PhoneNumber.phone_number
  end
end


def update
    debugger
    customer = Customer.find(params[:id])
    if customer.update_attributes(customers_params)
      flash[:success] = 'Customer information updated successfully'
      redirect_to customers_path
    else
      @customer = customer
      render :edit
    end
  end

Thanks

Answer 1

From this post

assigns is a hash, accessible within Rails tests, containing all the instance variables that would be available to a view at this point...

The key word is instance variables , ie variables that start with @ .

Modifying your update action to the following should make your tests pass

def update
    debugger
    @customer = Customer.find(params[:id])
    if @customer.update_attributes(customers_params)
      flash[:success] = 'Customer information updated successfully'
      redirect_to customers_path
    else
      render :edit
    end
end