[rspec-users] fills_in NoMethodError

Matt Wynne
Fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:05:44 -0000

Do we need to make it a bit clearer on the rspec.info site that
cucumber is the way forward? The trail of blog posts etc with the up-
to-date info is probably fairly bewildering to a newbie.

On 9 Oct 2008, at 19:38, Mark Thomson wrote:

> Thanks guys. I took your advice and moved to cucumber. It did turn
> out to be useful in that the more verbose error reporting led me to
> dive more deeply into the webrat source, eventually leading me to my
> problem - which actually was essentially the same noob error I made
> a few days when I failed to realize my development code had a data
> migration that hadn''t populated the test db.
>
> In this case the updated form mentioned in my earlier post had
> selection inputs whose options are meant to be stored in the db.
> Since they weren''t actually there, there were no select options in
> the form.
>
> What was puzzling initially was that an error related to selection
> inputs was showing up in the fills_in call. But it turns out that
> webrat looks for the named text field by searching over all the
> input tags in the form. In the process of parsing the selection
> inputs it was throwing up when it didn''t find the option tags it
was
> expecting.
>
> Mark.
>
>
>
> David Chelimsky wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 1:57 AM, Matt Wynne <matt at
mattwynne.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 9 Oct 2008, at 02:55, Mark Thomson wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> I have an RSpec story with an overall structure that looks
>>>> something like
>>>> this -
>>>>
>>>> ----
>>>> Given the user is on the start page
>>>> When the user clicks the ''new'' button
>>>> Then the ''new record'' page should be
displayed
>>>>
>>>> When the user fills in the form
>>>> And the user submits the form
>>>> Then the updated form should be displayed
>>>>
>>>> When the user fills in the updated form
>>>> And the user submits the form
>>>> Then a conformation message should be displayed
>>>> ----
>>>>
>>>> In the last When step, I have a fills_in call that is failing
>>>> with the
>>>> following:
>>>>
>>>> ----
>>>> NoMethodError: You have a nil object when you didn''t
expect it!
>>>> You might
>>>> have expected an instance of ActiveRecord::Base. The error
>>>> occurred while
>>>> evaluating nil.attributes.
>>>> ----
>>>>
>>>> I think the ActiveRecord thing is a red herring. Poking through
>>>> the Webrat
>>>> source code, it seems like the problem is more likely a failure
>>>> to find any
>>>> input fields. But I''m not sure why. Is there anything
>>>> inappropriate with the
>>>> way I''ve organized the story, stringing together
multiple When-Then
>>>> segments? One thing that seems curious is that I have a
>>>> completely identical
>>>> fills_in call in the When step that precedes the one that is
>>>> failing and yet
>>>> that one runs without any problem.
>>>>
>>> I think this sort of error tends to happen while a view is being
>>> rendered,
>>> so my guess is it''s something to do with your data setup.
>>>
>>> Sorry to bang on about this, but cucumber has much better support
>>> for error
>>> messages - you might want to consider making the switch before you
>>> waste too
>>> much time on this issue.
>>>
>> Matt is correct, you should definitely consider moving to cucumber,
>> though I don''t know that cucumber will necessary help you shed
any
>> more light on this particular issue.
>>
>> Mark, with the little bit of information you''ve provided, my
best
>> guess would be that the :new action is providing some instance
>> variable that is not being provided by the :create action in the case
>> where the data from "When the user fills in the form" is
incorrect or
>> insufficient to save the model.
>>
>> If that''s not correct, please post the code for the steps and
the
>> relevant controller actions.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> David
>> _______________________________________________
>> rspec-users mailing list
>> rspec-users at rubyforge.org
>> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users