How to make tests with find and date conditions? - ruby-on-rails-3

Question

I'm trying to develop some tests for a method which is responsible for retrieve some users created after some date. I don't know how to mock tests for it. The method is the following:
def user_list
render :nothing => true, :status => 422 if params[:time_param].blank?
time = Time.parse(params[:time_param])
#users = User.find(:all, :select => 'id, login, email',
:conditions => ["created_at > ?", time])
render :json => { :users => #users }
end
end
This is my spec:
describe UsersController do
context "when receiving time parameter" do
before (:each) do
#time_param = "2013-01-25 00:01:00"
user1 = mock_model(User, :created_at => Time.parse('2013-01-25 00:00:00'))
user2 = mock_model(User, :created_at => Time.parse('2013-01-25 00:01:00'))
user3 = mock_model(User, :created_at => Time.parse('2013-01-25 00:02:00'))
#users = []
#users << user1 << user2 << user3
end
it "should retrieve crimes after 00:01:00 time" do
User.stub(:find).with(:all, :select => 'id, login, email').and_return(#users)
get :user_list, { :time_param => #time_param }
JSON.parse(response.body)["users"].size.should eq 1
end
end
end
The problem is that it always returns all users despite of returning just one. (the last one). Where am I mistaking?
Help me =)

Answer 1

You are not testing what you have to test there, on a controller spec you only need to test that the method that you want is called with the parameters that you want, in your case, you have to test that the User model receives :find with parameters :all, :select => 'id, login, email', :conditions => ["created_at > ?", time] (with time the value that should be there.
Also, that logic does not belong to the controller, you should have a class method on User, something like select_for_json(date) to wrap around that find method (you can find a better name for it)
Then your controller becomes:
def user_list
render :nothing => true, :status => 422 if params[:time_param].blank?
time = Time.parse(params[:time_param])
#users = User.select_for_json(time)
render :json => { :users => #users }
end
your spec would be
before(:each) do
#users = mock(:users)
#time_param = "2013-01-25 00:01:00"
end
it "retrieve users for json" do
User.should_receive(:select_for_json).once.with(#time).and_return(#users)
get :user_list, { :time_param => #time }
assigns(:users).should == #users
end
that way you are sure that your action does what it does and the spec is A LOT faster since you are not creating users
then you can test that method on the model specs, there you have to create some users, invoke that method and check the users returned (don't stub/mock anything on your model spec)

Answer 2

Your stub call is telling find to ignore what it thought it was supposed to do and return #users instead. It will not attempt to match the conditions.
Unfortunately, to do your test I think you're going to have to allow the find to execute through your database which means you can't use mock_models. You probably will want to do either User.create(...) or FactoryGirl.create(:user) (or some other factory / fixture).
Of course doing it this way, you may hit MassAssignment issues if you use attr_accessible or attr_protected, but those are easy enough to stub out.
I hope that helps.