Rspec and FactoryGirl: SystemStackError: stack level too deep rails

Question

I have one spec and one factory and I am getting this error:

SystemStackError: stack level too deep
    from gems/activerecord-4.2.1/lib/active_record/relation/delegation.rb:9:in `relation_delegate_class'    

When I try to use the verbage 'build' it works; but I need it to save to test data and 'create' doesn't work in let!(:user) { create(:user) } as it sets off that error. Rspec seems to work fine.

I am running ruby 2.2.2; using rspec, and factory girl

require 'spec_helper'
describe API::V1::CurrentUserController do
   let!(:user) { create(:user) }
    setup_api_authorization

   describe "GET 'show'" do
    before (:each) do
    setup_api_headers
    get 'show', subdomain: 'api', id: 'me'
   end
end


FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :user, aliases: [:participant] do
    sequence(:email) { |n| "user#{n}@example.com" }
    first_name { Faker::Name.first_name }
    last_name { Faker::Name.last_name }
    password 'testpass'
    password_confirmation { |user| user.password }
    role_id {4}
 end
end

Answer 1

To setup associations you can just call the name of the factory:

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :user, aliases: [:participant] do
    sequence(:email) { |n| "user#{n}@example.com" }
    first_name { Faker::Name.first_name }
    last_name { Faker::Name.last_name }
    password 'testpass'
    password_confirmation { password  }
    role
  end
end

Never hardcode IDs into your factories - you're only setting yourself up for a world of hurt.

If you are using Rolify you can use a callback to add a role to a user instead:

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :user, aliases: [:participant] do
    sequence(:email) { |n| "user#{n}@example.com" }
    first_name { Faker::Name.first_name }
    last_name { Faker::Name.last_name }
    password 'testpass'
    password_confirmation { password }
    after(:create) { |user| user.add_role(:peasant) }
  end
end

Answer 2

This error generally happens when you accidentally recursively changing an attribute. If you have a username attribute in User model, and a virtual attribute named username, that is directly changing the username, you end up calling the virtual, the virtual calls the virtual again and so on.. Therefore, take a look on whether something like that happens somewhere in your code.

Stack level too deep error in Ruby on Rails