I have been playing with Rails for a couple of years now and have produced a couple of passable apps that are in production. I've always avoided doing any testing though and I have decided to rectify that. I'm trying to write some tests for an app that I wrote for work that is already up and running but undergoing constant revision. I'm concerned that any changes will break things so I want to get some tests up and running. I've read the RSpec book, watched a few screencasts but am struggling to get started (it strikes me as the sort of thing you only understand once you've actually done it).
I'm trying to write what should be a simple test of my ReportsController. The problem with my app is that pretty much the entire thing sits behind an authentication layer. Nothing works if you're not logged in so I have to simulate a login before I can even send forth a simple get request (although I guess I should write some tests to make sure that nothing works without a login - I'll get to that later).
I've set up a testing environment with RSpec, Capybara, FactoryGirl and Guard (wasn't sure which tools to use so used Railscasts' suggestions). The way I've gone about writing my test so far is to create a user in FactoryGirl like so;
FactoryGirl.define do sequence(:email) {|n| "user#{n}@example.com"} sequence(:login) {|n| "user#{n}"} factory :user do email {FactoryGirl.generate :email} login {FactoryGirl.generate :login} password "abc" admin false first_name "Bob" last_name "Bobson" end end
and then write my test like so;
require 'spec_helper' describe ReportsController do describe "GET 'index'" do it "should be successful" do user = Factory(:user) visit login_path fill_in "login", :with => user.login fill_in "password", :with => user.password click_button "Log in" get 'index' response.should be_success end end end
This fails like so;
1) ReportsController GET 'index' should be successful Failure/Error: response.should be_success expected success? to return true, got false # ./spec/controllers/reports_controller_spec.rb:13:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'
Interestingly if I change my test to response.should be_redirect
, the test passes which suggests to me that everything is working up until that point but the login is not being recognised.
So my question is what do I have to do to make this login work. Do I need to create a user in the database that matches the FactoryGirl credentials? If so, what is the point of FactoryGirl here (and should I even be using it)? How do I go about creating this fake user in the testing environment? My authentication system is a very simple self-made one (based on Railscasts episode 250). This logging in behaviour will presumably have to replicated for almost all of my tests so how do I go about doing it once in my code and having it apply everywhere?
I realise this is a big question so I thank you for having a look.
Running tests by their file or directory names is the most familiar way to run tests with RSpec. RSpec can take a file name or directory name and run the file or the contents of the directory. So you can do: rspec spec/jobs to run the tests found in the jobs directory.
let generates a method whose return value is memoized after the first call. This is known as lazy loading because the value is not loaded into memory until the method is called. Here is an example of how let is used within an RSpec test. let will generate a method called thing which returns a new instance of Thing .
RSpec is a Behavior-Driven Development tool for Ruby programmers. BDD is an approach to software development that combines Test-Driven Development, Domain Driven Design and Acceptance Test-Driven Planning. RSpec helps you do the TDD part of that equation, focusing on the documentation and design aspects of TDD.
Installing RSpecBoot up your terminal and punch in gem install rspec to install RSpec. Once that's done, you can verify your version of RSpec with rspec --version , which will output the current version of each of the packaged gems. Take a minute also to hit rspec --help and look through the various options available.
The answer depends on your authentication implementation. Normally, when a user logs in, you'll set a session variable to remember that user, something like session[:user_id]
. Your controllers will check for a login in a before_filter
and redirect if no such session variable exists. I assume you're already doing something like this.
To get this working in your tests, you have to manually insert the user information into the session. Here's part of what we use at work:
# spec/support/spec_test_helper.rb module SpecTestHelper def login_admin login(:admin) end def login(user) user = User.where(:login => user.to_s).first if user.is_a?(Symbol) request.session[:user] = user.id end def current_user User.find(request.session[:user]) end end # spec/spec_helper.rb RSpec.configure do |config| config.include SpecTestHelper, :type => :controller end
Now in any of our controller examples, we can call login(some_user)
to simulate logging in as that user.
I should also mention that it looks like you're doing integration testing in this controller test. As a rule, your controller tests should only be simulating requests to individual controller actions, like:
it 'should be successful' do get :index response.should be_success end
This specifically tests a single controller action, which is what you want in a set of controller tests. Then you can use Capybara/Cucumber for end-to-end integration testing of forms, views, and controllers.
Add helper file in spec/support/controller_helpers.rb and copy content below
module ControllerHelpers def sign_in(user) if user.nil? allow(request.env['warden']).to receive(:authenticate!).and_throw(:warden, {:scope => :user}) allow(controller).to receive(:current_user).and_return(nil) else allow(request.env['warden']).to receive(:authenticate!).and_return(user) allow(controller).to receive(:current_user).and_return(user) end end end
Now add following lines in spec/rails_helper.rb or spec/spec_helper.rb file
require 'support/controller_helpers' RSpec.configure do |config| config.include Devise::TestHelpers, :type => :controller config.include ControllerHelpers, :type => :controller end
Now in your controller spec file.
describe "GET #index" do before :each do @user=create(:user) sign_in @user end ... end
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