Q:

Is false considered to be nil in rspec?

There is field name active in customer table. It validates as below in customer.rb:
validates :active, :presence => true

Here is the rspec code to test a field short_name:
it "should be OK with duplicate short_name in different active status" do
  customer = Factory(:customer, :active => false, :short_name => "test user")
  customer1 = Factory.build(:customer, :active => true, :short_name => "Test user")
  customer1.should be_valid           
end

Validation for short_name is:
  validates :short_name, :presence => true, :uniqueness => { :scope => :active }

The above code causes the error:
  1) Customer data integrity should be OK with duplicate short_name in different active status
     Failure/Error: customer = Factory(:customer, :active => false, :short_name => "test user")
     ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid:
       Validation failed: Active can't be blank
     # ./spec/models/customer_spec.rb:62:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

It seems that the false value assigned to field active was considered to be blank or nil by rspec and failed the data validation check. Tried to use 0 for false and it causes the same error. The rspec case passes if removing the validation for field active.

A:

This is not a rspec issue, it's related to Rails' validation. I suppose your active field is a boolean and, to quote the validates_presence_of documentation:

If you want to validate the presence of a boolean field (where the real values are true and false), you will want to use validates_inclusion_of :field_name, :in => [true, false] This is due to the way Object#blank? handles boolean values. false.blank? # => true

So simply change your validator to something like the following (assuming you want the "sexy" syntax) and it should work:
validates :active, :inclusion => [true, false]

