How to test render status: 404 with Rails4 and RSpec when using rescue_from

Question

I have a Rails4 application with a 'PagesController'.

The show-method throws a customized Exception 'PageNotFoundError' when a Page is not found.

On top of the controller I defined rescue_from PageNotFoundError, with: :render_not_found

render not found is a private method of PagesController and looks like:

def render_not_found   flash[:alert]=t(:page_does_not_exists, title: params[:id])   @pages = Page.all   render :index, status: :not_found #404 end 

The rails-log in development-mode shows:

Started GET "/pages/readmef" for 127.0.0.1 at 2013-08-02 23:11:35 +0200 Processing by PagesController#show as HTML   Parameters: {"id"=>"readmef"}   ..   Completed 404 Not Found in 14ms (Views: 12.0ms) 

So, it seams my :status => :not_found works, so far.

When I do curl -v http://0.0.0.0:3000/pages/readmef curl logs

curl -v http://localhost:3000/pages/readmef * About to connect() to localhost port 3000 (#0) *   Trying 127.0.0.1... * connected * Connected to localhost (127.0.0.1) port 3000 (#0) > GET /pages/readmef HTTP/1.1 > User-Agent: curl/7.24.0 (x86_64-apple-darwin12.0) libcurl/7.24.0 OpenSSL/0.9.8x zlib/1.2.5 > Host: localhost:3000 > Accept: */* > < HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found < X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN 

But the following test with RSpec fails:

 it 'renders an error if page not found' do     visit page_path('not_existing_page_321')     expect(response.status).to eq(404)     within( '.alert-error' ) do       page.should have_content('Page not_existing_page_321 doesn\'t exist')     end   end    1) PagesController renders an error if page not found      Failure/Error: expect(response.status).to eq(404)         expected: 404             got: 200 

Everything looks fine and even the test.log says 404

$ tail -f log/test.log Started GET "/pages/not_existing_page_321" for 127.0.0.1 at 2013-08-03 09:48:13 +0200 Processing by PagesController#show as HTML   Parameters: {"id"=>"not_existing_page_321"}   Rendered pages/_page.haml (0.8ms)   Rendered layouts/_navigation.haml (0.6ms)   Rendered layouts/_messages.haml (0.2ms)   Rendered layouts/_locales.haml (0.3ms)   Rendered layouts/_footer.haml (0.6ms) Completed 404 Not Found in 6ms (Views: 4.5ms) 

I tried different Servers, WebRICK, Thin, unicorn. Everything works as expected in development and production mode. Even the test.log is correct but the test fails.

Can anybody tell me why the test says 200 instead of 404?

Answer 1

Another approach with RSpec 3+ would be to test for an exception:

it 'responds with a 404 if the page is not found' do   expect { get(:show, id: 'bad_id') }.to raise_error(ActionController::RoutingError) end