Mixed up with rspec assigns while testing controller

Question

I'm trying to get a handle on testing controllers, and so far I seem to be stuck on the simplest problems.

documents.controller:

    def edit
      @document = Document.find(params[:id])
    end

documents_controller_spec:

    describe 'GET #edit', focus: true do
      before(:each) { @doc = FactoryGirl.create(:document)}

      it "should assign @document to the document" do
        get :edit, id: @doc
        assigns(:document).should eq(@doc)
      end
    end

Always returns false. @document is always assigned nil. I've tried specifying params[id] to be @doc.id, but that doesn't fix anything. What am I doing wrong here?

Answer 1

From rspec's perspective, the two documents (assigned to @doc) you are comparing in the line:

assigns(:document).should eq(@doc)

are not the same - they have the same ID in the database, but the actual ruby objects you are comparing are different, as one was created in your 'before' block, while the other is presumably instantiated inside your controller when the GET request executes in your test.

My guess is the following will work:

assigns(:document).id.should eq(@doc.id)

Answer 2

Try changing

get :edit, id: @doc

to

get :edit, id: @doc.id

Basically, it just needs the id to build the route.