#find_model does not use label to find the model

If you are using find_model to retrieve a model using the pickle ref, I think that the 'model' method is what you want...

model 'user: "Fred"'

or
model! 'user: "Fred"' (raises if no such model is available in the scenario)

find_model finds a model using the passed attrs, and stores it for pickle usage under the given named. So, in your case it finds the first model (because you;ve not given any attrs to find by) and stores it as 'user: "Fred"'

Cheers,
Ian

Yeah, #model works great. I was trying to do something like:

Given a user: "Fred" exists
When I delete the user: "Fred"
Then the user: "Fred" should not exist

And this does not work as I expect if another user exists because the generated pickle step matching Then the user: "Fred" should not exist uses #find_model.

I could tweak the step definition to do what I want with #model, but I thought #find_model was supposed to use the label also.

Thanks for your time,
Bo

Hi Bo,

Remember that the pickle refs are purely for internal referencing in a scenario.

With that in mind, You probably want to use an attribute on the model to find/create the user:

Given a user "Fred" exists with name: "fred"
When I delete the user "Fred"
Then a user should not exist with name: "fred"

Cheers,
Ian

Thinking about it some more, your use case illustrates that an error should be raised if you are asserting non-existence of models, and giving a name

EIther that, or make two steps, one which queries the db, and one which queries via pickle

  Then the user: "fred" should not exist
  Then the user should not exist
  #=> model(pickle_ref).should be_nil

  Then 0 users should exist with name: "fred"
  Then no users should exist with name: "fred"
  #=> look in the db

Cheers,
Ian

Alright, I guess I misunderstood the intent of #find_model.

Do you think it is wrong to test non-existence of a model using a label instead of by attributes?
I could do something like this in the step definition:

lambda { model(name) }.should raise_error(ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound)

It seems to work correctly, but is it using the pickle reference for something that was really not intended?