How to write mock for Model method that calls a mailer

Question

I'm trying to write a test for my Message model. This model has a method 'send_message':

def send_message
   ContactMailer.contact_mail(self.name, self.email, self.text, self.ip).deliver
end

In my rspec file I have the following:

mailer = double(ContactMailer)
mailer.should_receive(:contact_mail)

FactoryGirl.build(:message).send_message

I am receiving the following error:

 Failure/Error: mailer.should_receive(:contact_mail)
   (Double ContactMailer).contact_mail(any args)
       expected: 1 time with any arguments
       received: 0 times with any arguments

Any idea? Could it be because I'm not taking .deliver into account?

Answer 1

No, the issue is that you haven't told RSpec that ContactMailer should receive that message. The argument to double is just a way to "name" the double for documentation purposes, as discussed in https://github.com/rspec/rspec-mocks

You actually don't need a double in this case, as you can set the expectation directly on the ContactMailer class as follows:

ContactMailer.should_receive(:contact_mail)