Unexpected behaviour of user.authenticate() with Rails in test environment

Question

I want to make an acceptance test for the signing in flow, and I'm experiencing an unexpected behaviour of user.authenticate method.

Authentication in development environment works as expected: a POST with email and plain password pair passes it perfectly. The problem arises when I run tests: authentication with plain password fails. But strangely it succeeds with password's hash.

Here's the code:

class SessionsController < ApplicationController ... def create user = User.find_by_email(params[:email].downcase) logger.debug Rails.env logger.debug "password #{params[:password]}" logger.debug user.authenticate(params[:password]).to_yaml ...

And here are logs for different environments:

env development password 123456 --- !ruby/object:User

env test password 123456 --- false

env test password $2a$10$70AlnpaXIMHtjDUei/1HU.OSEG4WVjW6ens3jzN04bC8SOxTv2Ftm --- !ruby/object:User

Any idea what can I do so that authentication succeeds with plain passwords in the test environment?

I'm using bcrypt-ruby for passwords in ActiveModel objects.

Thanks.

It's either a fixture from users.yml or FactoryGirl generated object. In the test database, password hash is always a bcrypt product. — Misha Karpenko, Oct 28 '14 at 19:34
john: first_name: John password_digest: $2a$10$R1kxWTCTO/u3YsbEwI6WRO4b2BfPCfLlktyTt2HtblL1YF4pZEskG # 123456 — Misha Karpenko, Oct 28 '14 at 19:34
factory :user do first_name "Gustav" password { BCrypt::Password.create("123456") } — Misha Karpenko, Oct 28 '14 at 19:35
@BroiSatse Just saw it. Could it be that referencing password_digest from fixtures and password from FactoryGirl generator is the root of all evil? Will check right now. — Misha Karpenko, Oct 28 '14 at 19:35

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 28 '14 at 19:37

Here:

factory :user do 
   first_name "Gustav"
   password { BCrypt::Password.create("123456") }
end

You're creating a password being digest for given string. Change it to:

 password "123456"
 password_confirmation { password }

and let BCrypt create the digest.

Unexpected behaviour of user.authenticate() with Rails in test environment

1 Answers1