Rails - Mar 2012 - How do I create a new object in testing to test a controller?

I''m using Test::Unit to do functional testing on one of my controllers.

The action I want to test is create, from SessionsController. I have 
simplified it to the extreme:

def create
  @user = User.find_by_email(params[:email])
  if @user
    flash.now[:notice] = "ok, it exists"
  else
    flash.now[:notice] = "it does not exist"
  end
  render :new
end


This is my functional test:

require ''test_helper''

class SessionsControllerTest < ActionController::TestCase
  test "object creation" do
    user = User.create!(email:
"user-hcDgGtZH8xNBDgjK7y7TUQ@public.gmane.org", password:
"secret")

    assert user.valid? # make sure User.new is correct
    assert user.persisted? # make sure it''s persisted

    post :create, post: { email:
"user-hcDgGtZH8xNBDgjK7y7TUQ@public.gmane.org" }

    assert_equal "ok, it exists", flash.now[:notice]
  end
end


And this is the execution flow:
 
> $ bundle exec rake db:test:prepare
$ ruby -Itest test/functional/sessions_controller_test.rb -n 
test_object_creation
Run options: -n test_object_creation

# Running tests:

F

Finished tests in 0.235903s, 4.2390 tests/s, 12.7171 assertions/s.

  1) Failure:
test_object_creation(SessionsControllerTest) 
[test/functional/sessions_controller_test.rb:13]:
<"ok, it exists"> expected but was
<"it does not exist">.

1 tests, 1 assertions, 1 failures, 0 errors, 0 skips



It seems that User.new is not persisting to the database. But why? I have 
asserted the persistion and it passes.

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