How to put a value in flash when testing an action

Question

I'm trying to test an action that needs a value stored in flash.

def my_action
  if flash[:something].nil?
    redirect_to root_path if flash[:something]
    return
  end

  # Do some other stuff
end

In my test I do something like:

before(:each) do
  flash[:something] = "bob"
end

it "should do whatever I had commented out above" do
  get :my_action
  # Assert something
end

The problem I'm running into is that flash has no values inside of my_action. I'm guessing this is because no request actually happens.

Is there a way to set flash up for a test like this?

Answer 1

I had to solve a simialr issue; I had a controller action that redirected to one of two paths at completion depending of the value of a hash entry. The spec test that I found worked, for your example above, was:

it "should do whatever I had commented out above" do
  get :my_action, action_params_hash, @current_session, {:something=>true}
  # Assert something
end

@current_session is a hash with session specific stuf; I'm using authlogic. I found about using the fourth argument of get for the flash in [A Guide to Testing Rails Applications[1]). I found that the same approach also works for delete; and I presume all others.