[mocha-developer] Stubbing objects and calling to_json on them errors (circular reference)

[Bill Kocik]

My apologies if there's a user list I should be posting this to. I  
didn't find one.

Suppose you have a controller action like this:

def do_something
   @something = Something.find(:first)
   @something.do_whatever
   render :json => @something.to_json
end

A test might be this:

context "when do_something is called" do
   setup do
     @something = Something.new()
     Something.expects(:find).returns(@something)
     @something.stubs(:do_whatever)
     get :do_something
   end
   should_respond_with :success
end

Because I stubbed a method on my @something object (and this also  
happens with expects()), I get this:

1) Error:
test: when do_something is called should respond with success.  
(SomethingControllerTest):
ActiveSupport::JSON::CircularReferenceError: object references itself

If I print out the object @something, I see that it contains an @mocha  
attribute that references the containing object, which is the cause of  
to_json's heartburn and the error. But that @mocha attribute is not  
present if I never call stubs() or expects() on the object that's  
going to be converted to JSON, and I do not get the error in that  
case. Can anyone show me what I'm doing wrong, or is this actually a  
known issue?

--
Bill Kocik