RSpec. How to check if the object method is called?

Question

I'm writing the spec for controller:

it 'should call the method that performs the movies search' do
  movie = Movie.new
  movie.should_receive(:search_similar)
  get :find_similar, {:id => '1'}
end

and my controller looks like:

def find_similar
 @movies = Movie.find(params[:id]).search_similar
end

after running the rspec i get the following:

Failures:
1) MoviesController searching by director name should call the method that performs the movies search
 Failure/Error: movie.should_receive(:search_similar)
   (#<Movie:0xaa2a454>).search_similar(any args)
       expected: 1 time
       received: 0 times
 # ./spec/controllers/movies_controller_spec.rb:33:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

which i seem to understand and accept, because in my controller code i invoke the Class (Movie) method and i don't see any way to connect "find_similar" with object, created in the spec.

So the question is -> what is the way to check if the method is called on the object, created in spec?

Answer 1

it 'should call the method that performs the movies search' do
  movie = Movie.new
  movie.should_receive(:search_similar)
  Movie.should_receive(:find).and_return(movie)
  get :find_similar, {:id => '1'}
end

_{For what is worth, I'm totally against these stub-all-things tests, they just make code changes harder and are actually testing nothing but code structure.}

Answer 2

At first, your movie is not persisted yet.

At second, not fact, that will have id 1

So try this

it 'should call the method that performs the movies search' do
  movie = Movie.create
  movie.should_receive(:search_similar)
  get :find_similar, {:id => movie.id}
end