Ruby on Rails before_ callbacks must return true gotcha

Spent a heck of a long time trying to figure out why my Cucumber tests were failing this afternoon. I assumed it had to do with an API key problem (this test/model involved a spam checking service) until I discovered that “If a before_* callback returns false, all the later callbacks and the associated action are cancelled.” Cucumber was providing no feedback, and I was having no such problems when using the site myself. So I finally discovered, thanks to some other poor souls who went through this same hell before me, that tagging a return true on the end of the method will prevent this:

class Comment < ActiveRecord::Base
  before_create :is_it_spam?


  def is_it_spam?
    if RAILS_ENV == 'test' || Comment.disable_spam_check == true
      self.is_spam = false
    else
      self.is_spam = true if self.spam?  
    end                                  
    true 
  end  


end

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