Rail 3.2.2/Devise: deprecation warning with rspec - ruby-on-rails-3

Question

I recently upgraded an app to rails 3.2.2.
I'm using Factory_girl
Factory.sequence :name do |n| "name-#{n}" end
Factory.define :user do |u| u.first_name{ Factory.next(:name) }
u.last_name { |u| 'last_' + u.first_name } u.password 'secret'
u.password_confirmation { |u| u.password } u.sequence(:email) { |i|
"user_#{i}#example.com" }
end
and this simple test
specify { Factory.build(:user).should be_valid }
generate the following warning
DEPRECATION WARNING: You're trying to create an attribute user_id'.
Writing arbitrary attributes on a model is deprecated. Please just use
attr_writer` etc. (called from block (2 levels) in
at...
How can I get rid of it?

Answer 1

It's probably because you haven't prepared/migrated your test database with updated column definitions, thus it thinks you're trying to arbitrarily set the attribute.
Run rake db:test:prepare to make sure it's updated.
Here's the source code of that method, where you can see Rails checks for the column or attribute first, then warns if they're not found.

Answer 2

I've met the same warning with the following code:
Ad model:
class Ad < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user
end
Factories:
FactoryGirl.define do
factory :ad do
association :user
end
end
FactoryGirl.define do
factory :user do
first_name {Factory.next(:first_name)}
last_name {Factory.next(:last_name)}
email {|x| "#{x.first_name}.#{x.last_name}#{Factory.next(:count)}#test.com"}
password Forgery(:basic).password
confirmed_at Date.today << 10
end
end
Test
require 'spec_helper'
describe Ad do
before(:each) do
#ad = Factory.build(:ad)
end
"it is not valid without a user"
end
Running the test gave me a similar error.
Adding
attr_accessor :user
to the Ad model fixed the warning.
I hope it helps.

Answer 3

I had this same warning while doing tests in Rspec and my issue was that I had a Parent model and Child model where I accidentally had this:
class Child < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :parent
end
......
class Parent < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :child
end