Unique email address on User model unit test failing

August 9, 2022

I have a user model that expects an email address to be unique however the models spec is failing:

spec/user_spec.rb

it "has a unique email" do
  user1 = build(:user, email: "example@email.com")
  user2 = build(:user, email: "example@email.com")
  expect(user2).to_not be_valid
end

app/model/user.rb

class User < ApplicationRecord
      
  validates :email, format: {with: URI::MailTo::EMAIL_REGEXP}, presence: true, uniqueness: true

end

User has a unique email
     Failure/Error: expect(user2).to_not be_valid
       expected #<User id: nil, email: "example@email.com", created_at: nil, updated_at: nil> not to be valid

>Solution :

The uniqueness validation happens by performing an SQL query into the model’s table, searching for an existing record with the same value in that attribute.

So, you just build two users in memory, neither of them is saved to database. Save the user1 to database, and then validate user2.

A possible change to your test may look like this:

it "has a unique email" do
  user1 = create(:user, email: "example@email.com")
  user2 = build(:user, email: "example@email.com")
  expect(user2).to_not be_valid
end