How to do integration testing with RSpec and Devise/CanCan?

Question

If I have a Devise model User, of which only those users with role :admin are allowed to view a certain url, how can I write an RSpec integration test to check that the status returns 200 for that url?

def login(user)   post user_session_path, :email => user.email, :password => 'password' end 

This was pseudo-suggested in the answer to this question: Stubbing authentication in request spec, but I can't for the life of me get it to work with devise. CanCan is receiving a nil User when checking Ability, which doesn't have the correct permissions, naturally.

There's no access to the controller in integration specs, so I can't stub current_user, but I'd like to do something like this.

describe "GET /users" do   it "should be able to get" do     clear_users_and_add_admin #does what it says...     login(admin)     get users_path     response.status.should be(200)   end end 

NOTE!!!: all this has changed since the question was asked. The current best way to do this is here: http://github.com/plataformatec/devise/wiki/How-To:-Test-with-Capybara

Answer 1

@pschuegr's own answer got me across the line. For completeness, this is what I did that gets me easily set up for both request specs and controller specs (using FactoryGirl for creating the user instance):

in /spec/support/sign_in_support.rb:

#module for helping controller specs module ValidUserHelper   def signed_in_as_a_valid_user     @user ||= FactoryGirl.create :user     sign_in @user # method from devise:TestHelpers   end end  # module for helping request specs module ValidUserRequestHelper    # for use in request specs   def sign_in_as_a_valid_user     @user ||= FactoryGirl.create :user     post_via_redirect user_session_path, 'user[email]' => @user.email, 'user[password]' => @user.password   end end  RSpec.configure do |config|   config.include ValidUserHelper, :type => :controller   config.include ValidUserRequestHelper, :type => :request end 

Then in request spec:

describe "GET /things" do   it "test access to things, works with a signed in user" do     sign_in_as_a_valid_user     get things_path     response.status.should be(200)   end end  describe "GET /things" do   it "test access to things, does not work without a signed in user" do     get things_path     response.status.should be(302) # redirect to sign in page   end end 

and similarly, use 'signed_in_as_valid_user' in controller specs (which wraps Devise::TestHelpers sign_in method with a user from FactoryGirl)