How can I block external connections with RSpec & Capybara?

Question

With my Rails project, I would like to write tests non-ideal conditions such as lack of internet connection or timeouts. For example, I am using a gem to contact an API and would like to make sure that I handle the error correctly if there is a connection issue between my app and the external API.

I can do this already by making a fixture with VCR and removing the response from the "cassette". However, this has drawbacks:

• It has to be done manually.
• The cassettes can not be gitignored if I am working with a team(which I am).

How can I simply create a block in my RSpec tests that will prevent external connections, simulating the lack of an internet connection?

Answer 1

Per this thought-bot article

https://robots.thoughtbot.com/how-to-stub-external-services-in-tests#disable-all-remote-connections

# spec/spec_helper.rb
require 'webmock/rspec'
WebMock.disable_net_connect!(allow_localhost: true)