Database data not appearing in Capyara/RSpec system tests

This is my spec/system/group_index_spec.rb file.

require_relative '../rails_helper'

RSpec.describe 'Group Index', type: :system do
  let(:user) { User.create(name: 'First User', email: 'test@user.com', password: 'password') }
  before do
    # driven_by(:rack_test)
    puts 'Creating test data...'

    5.times do |i|
      group = Group.create(name: "Group #{i}", author: user)
      group.icon.attach(io: File.open(Rails.root.join('spec', 'models', 'files', 'test.jpg')), filename: 'test.jpg',
                        content_type: 'image/jpeg')

      5.times do |j|
        Entity.create(name: "Entity #{j}", amount: 100, author: user)
      end
    end

    Group.all.each do |group|
      group.entities << Entity.all.sample(rand(1..3))
    end

    Entity.all.each do |entity|
      entity.groups << Group.all.sample(rand(1..3))
    end

    puts 'Logging in...'
    visit new_user_session_path
    fill_in 'user_email', with: 'test@user.com'
    fill_in 'user_password', with: 'password'
    click_button 'Log in'
  end

  it 'displays all groups', js: true do
    visit groups_path
    expect(page).to have_content('Group 0')
    expect(page).to have_content('Group 1')
    expect(page).to have_content('Group 2')
    expect(page).to have_content('Group 3')
    expect(page).to have_content('Group 4')
  end
end

When I run this test, I get this error message.

Creating test data...
Logging in...
F

Failures:

  1) Group Index displays all groups
     Failure/Error: expect(page).to have_content('Group 0')
       expected to find text "Group 0" in "CATEGORIES\nNew"
     
     [Screenshot Image]: /home/shasherazi/programming/microverse/budget-app/tmp/capybara/failures_r_spec_example_groups_g
roup_index_displays_all_groups_713.png

     
     # ./spec/system/group_index_spec.rb:36:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'

Finished in 8.22 seconds (files took 1.64 seconds to load)
1 example, 1 failure

Failed examples:

rspec ./spec/system/group_index_spec.rb:34 # Group Index displays all groups

Here is a short video showing the process.

Here is my rails_helper.rb file that I modified taking advice from the internet.

# This file is copied to spec/ when you run 'rails generate rspec:install'
require 'spec_helper'
ENV['RAILS_ENV'] ||= 'test'
require_relative '../config/environment'
# Prevent database truncation if the environment is production
abort('The Rails environment is running in production mode!') if Rails.env.production?
require 'rspec/rails'
require 'capybara/rspec'
require 'database_cleaner'
# Add additional requires below this line. Rails is not loaded until this point!

# Requires supporting ruby files with custom matchers and macros, etc, in
# spec/support/ and its subdirectories. Files matching `spec/**/*_spec.rb` are
# run as spec files by default. This means that files in spec/support that end
# in _spec.rb will both be required and run as specs, causing the specs to be
# run twice. It is recommended that you do not name files matching this glob to
# end with _spec.rb. You can configure this pattern with the --pattern
# option on the command line or in ~/.rspec, .rspec or `.rspec-local`.
#
# The following line is provided for convenience purposes. It has the downside
# of increasing the boot-up time by auto-requiring all files in the support
# directory. Alternatively, in the individual `*_spec.rb` files, manually
# require only the support files necessary.
#
# Dir[Rails.root.join('spec', 'support', '**', '*.rb')].sort.each { |f| require f }

# Checks for pending migrations and applies them before tests are run.
# If you are not using ActiveRecord, you can remove these lines.
begin
  ActiveRecord::Migration.maintain_test_schema!
rescue ActiveRecord::PendingMigrationError => e
  abort e.to_s.strip
end
RSpec.configure do |config|
  # Remove this line if you're not using ActiveRecord or ActiveRecord fixtures
  config.fixture_path = "#{Rails.root}/spec/fixtures"

  # If you're not using ActiveRecord, or you'd prefer not to run each of your
  # examples within a transaction, remove the following line or assign false
  # instead of true.
  config.use_transactional_fixtures = false

  config.before(:suite) do
    DatabaseCleaner.strategy = :truncation
    DatabaseCleaner.clean_with(:truncation)
  end

  config.before(:each) do
    DatabaseCleaner.start
  end

  config.after(:each) do
    DatabaseCleaner.clean
  end
  # You can uncomment this line to turn off ActiveRecord support entirely.
  # config.use_active_record = false

  # RSpec Rails can automatically mix in different behaviours to your tests
  # based on their file location, for example enabling you to call `get` and
  # `post` in specs under `spec/controllers`.
  #
  # You can disable this behaviour by removing the line below, and instead
  # explicitly tag your specs with their type, e.g.:
  #
  #     RSpec.describe UsersController, type: :controller do
  #       # ...
  #     end
  #
  # The different available types are documented in the features, such as in
  # https://rspec.info/features/6-0/rspec-rails
  config.infer_spec_type_from_file_location!

  # Filter lines from Rails gems in backtraces.
  config.filter_rails_from_backtrace!
  # arbitrary gems may also be filtered via:
  # config.filter_gems_from_backtrace("gem name")
  Capybara.run_server = true
  Capybara.server_port = 7000
  Capybara.app_host = "http://localhost:#{Capybara.server_port}"
end

Everything works fine in my dev environment where I am using faker to create sample data in a similar way. I have spent almost all day today finding the solution to this problem but couldn't. I'll be very grateful to you if you help.

Solution

I needed to call .save manually to actually save the data. Here is the corrected test file.

require_relative '../rails_helper'

RSpec.describe 'Groups', type: :system do
  let(:user) { User.create(name: 'First User', email: 'test@user.com', password: 'password') }
  before do
    # comment the line below to run tests in browser
    driven_by(:rack_test)

    puts "\nCreating test data..."

    5.times do |i|
      group = Group.create(name: "Group #{i}", author: user)
      group.icon.attach(io: File.open(Rails.root.join('spec', 'models', 'files', 'test.jpg')), filename: 'test.jpg',
                        content_type: 'image/jpeg')
      group.save

      5.times do |j|
        entity = Entity.create(name: "Entity #{j}", amount: 100, author: user)
        entity.save
      end
    end

    Group.all.each do |group|
      group.entities << Entity.all.sample(rand(1..3))
    end

    Entity.all.each do |entity|
      entity.groups << Group.all.sample(rand(1..3))
    end

    puts 'Logging in...'
    visit new_user_session_path
    fill_in 'user_email', with: 'test@user.com'
    fill_in 'user_password', with: 'password'
    click_button 'Log in'
  end

  after(:all) do
    puts "\nCleaning up..."
    Group.destroy_all
    Entity.destroy_all
    User.destroy_all
  end

  it 'displays all groups, their names, and icons', js: true do
    visit groups_path
    user.groups.each do |group|
      expect(page).to have_content(group.name)
      expect(page).to have_css("img[src*='#{group.icon.blob.filename}']")
    end
  end
end

You have so much focus here on the DB side of things, but that doesn't seem to be your issue.

I think you should pp Group.all in your test before your expectation, just to confirm (for yourself) that this is not a DB issue.

The error message you're getting seems to suggest that you're actually on the categories index page (or the groups index page is using the categories index view for some reason):

> expected to find text "Group 0" in "CATEGORIES\nNew"

Probably the screenshot being saved in /home/shasherazi/programming/microverse/budget-app/tmp/capybara/failures_r_spec_example_groups_g
roup_index_displays_all_groups_713.png can help you confirm this and you can begin troubleshooting.

The issue here is likely that your user isn't actually logged in. This is because actions happen asynchronously and you're not doing anything to wait for the login to succeed. Your test is effectively running

    ...
visit new_user_session_path
fill_in 'user_email', with: 'test@user.com'
fill_in 'user_password', with: 'password'
click_button 'Log in'
visit groups_path
expect(page).to have_content('Group 0')
...

Which will cause the visit groups_path to cancel any request triggered by the click_button call, and visit the groups page as an unauthenticated user. You can test that by just adding a sleep 5 after the click_button to see if it fixes your issue. If it does you'll want to replace the sleep with something that actually looks for a change in the page that indicates the login has completed, along the lines of

    fill_in 'user_password', with: 'password'
click_button 'Log in'
expect(page).to have_content('Logged In')