Rack::Test resulting in ActiveRecord::AssociationTypeMismatch

Question

I have a problem when running all of my specs.

    ActiveRecord::AssociationTypeMismatch:
       Affiliate(#2154746360) expected, got Affiliate(#2199508660)

It would appear that my models are being loaded twice.

I have isolated the problem to be introduced with Rack::Test's requirement to define an "app" method.

require 'rack/test'
include Rack::Test::Methods

# app method is needed for rack-test
def app
  Rails.application
end

If I comment out Rails.application my rack specs do not work, but all of my other specs work fine. The use of Rails.application in the "app" method introduces the error above.

If I run my specs individually, everything works. I am preloading my environment with Spork and I think that the models are loaded first by Spork and then they are redefined when Rails.application is called in my "app" method.

Any ideas on how I can resolve this problem? I am not sure if there is another way to set my Rails app in the "app" method.

Pappas

We've been running into precisely the same issue, and have been quite unsuccessful in sussing it out. Have you had any luck? – Coparcenary

Seems like there's some action on the factory_girl Google Group on this issue: groups.google.com/group/factory_girl/browse_thread/thread/… – Coparcenary

Michael, I have not had any luck with it so far. I have just avoided running the offending specs with the rest of my specs. It is a pain. – Pappas

I did end up solving this, but I don't know exactly what change in my refactoring did the trick. I think it's possible the problem was that my Rspec config block was outsite of Spork's prefork, but that doesn't really sit right with me. If it's helpful, I can go through my changes and try to isolate what actually fixed it. – Coparcenary

Answer 1

I am no longer having this problem anymore. I updated my gems. Rails was updated from 3.0.5 to 3.0.7 and I would guess that may have been the gem update that fixed my problem. Either way with newer versions of gems, my problem is fixed.

Pappas

Answer 2

From source code for Rails.application:

# File railties/lib/rails.rb, line 34
def application
  @@application ||= nil
end

This means that Rails.application returns the same object every time. Maybe this is the problem - running multiple tests on the same Rails app clashes with objects.

Some tutorials set tests up like this:

def app
  Rails::Application
end

Whereas others do it like this:

def app
  ActionController::Dispatcher.new
end

Both of which create new object for each call to app.

EDIT: Just noticed from logs that ActionController::Dispatcher.new is marked as deprecated.

Newhouse

Thanks, but after updating my gems things seem to have sorted their way out. – Pappas