RecordNotFound is raised when using find_by_id to get a nonexistent record in RSpec

Question

I wrote this specification in products_controller_spec.rb, which is designed to test redirection when destroy is called on a nonexistent entry:

it "deleting a non-existent product should redirect to the user profile page with a flash error" do delete :destroy, {:id => 9999} response.should redirect_to "/profile" flash[:error].should == I18n.t(:slideshow_was_not_deleted) end 

Here is the controller action in products_controller.rb:

 def destroy product = Product.find_by_id(params[:id]) redirect_to "profile" if !product if product.destroy flash[:notice] = t(:slideshow_was_deleted) if current_user.admin? and product.user != current_user redirect_to :products, :notice => t(:slideshow_was_deleted) else redirect_to "/profile" end else if current_user.admin? redirect_to :products, :error => t(:slideshow_was_not_deleted) else redirect_to "/profile" end end end 

Now I did not expect the specification to go through for the first time, but I do not understand why this fails:

 Failure/Error: delete :destroy, {:id => 9999} ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound: Couldn't find Product with id=9999 

I had the impression that #find_by_id would not return a RecordNotFound error for a non-existent record. So why am I getting it? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Error RecordNotFound is triggered by CanCan. This does not save the controller from the action (apparently, this happens before the action is performed). There were two ways to solve it -

• Specification change for:

   it "deleting a non-existent product should result in a RecordNotFound Error" do product_id = 9999 expect { delete :destroy, {:id => product_id}}.to raise_error ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound end 

or, 2. CanCan patches like this .

I did not like the fix route, so I went for option 1.