hello group,
I recently started with the pragmatic bookshelve rspec book. In one of the latest chapters, there is an example based on the models 'message' and 'user'.
A message has a recipient and an sender. Users have an association 'sent_messages' and 'received_messages'. After the example the book invites to add a 'subscription' model. A user has one subscription and it should be possible via the subscription to limit the number of messages a user can send.
I tried to extend the working rspec examples by adding the subscription model, but the examples showed me that the associations I created were not working as I expected. I hope someone can explain me why.
The code of the models is:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base has_many( :received_messages, {:class_name => Message.name, :foreign_key => 'recipient_id'}) has_many( :sent_messages, { :class_name => Message.name, :foreign_key => 'sender_id' }) belongs_to :subscription, :class_name => 'Subscription' # I added this myself
def send_message( attrs) if subscription.can_send_message? sent_messages.create! attrs end end end
class Message < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :recipient, :class_name => 'User' validates_presence_of :title, :text, :recipient end
class Subscription < ActiveRecord::Base # I added this class myself has_one( :user, { :class_name => User.name, :foreign_key => 'subscription_id' })
def can_send_message? () puts "size =#{user.sent_messages.size}" # strange. TODO user.sent_messages.length < month_limit end end
Now, the example I made to test it is not working: if I access the sent_messages association via the user directly, I get the expected messages, but if I do it via the user of the subscription, the association is an empty array.
To show it, I put some print statements in the example. I'm very much confused. Who can explain what I did wrong?
describe Subscription do describe "#can_send_message?" do before( :each) do @ruud = User.create! :subscription => Subscription.create! ( :month_limit => 1), :login => 'rudd' @erik = User.create! end
context "when a user has reached the subscription limit for the month" do it "returns false" do msg = @ruud.send_message( :title => "Book Update", :text => "Beta 11 includes great stuff!", :recipient => @erik) p @ruud # << this is the test user p @ruud.sent_messages user_via_subscr = @ruud.subscription.user p user_via_subscr # << the test user, accessed via the subscription p user_via_subscr.sent_messages @ruud.zent_messages.should == [msg] @ruud.subscription.can_send_message?.should == false end end end end
The output is
size =0 .size =0 #<User id: 1, login: "rudd", created_at: "2012-01-02 10:40:32", updated_at: "2012-01-02 10:40:32", subscription_id: 1> [#<Message id: 1, title: "Book Update", text: "Beta 11 includes great stuff!", recipient_id: 2, created_at: "2012-01-02 10:40:32", updated_at: "2012-01-02 10:40:32", sender_id: 1>] #<User id: 1, login: "rudd", created_at: "2012-01-02 10:40:32", updated_at: "2012-01-02 10:40:32", subscription_id: 1> size =0
As you can see, if I access the user directly or I access the user via the subscription, p prints the same fields. But the sent_messages array is different in both cases......
thanks in advance!
Ruud
