No route matches rspec's anonymous controller

Question

Based on my understanding of the rspec spec, I would expect the following example to pass.

describe ApplicationController do

  controller do
    def test
    end
  end

  it "calls actions" do
    get :test
  end

end

Instead it fails with:

No route matches {:controller=>"anonymous", :action=>"test"}

I've even tried defining the route for the "anonymous" controller in the routes file but to no avail. Is there something I'm missing here? This should work, shouldn't it?

Answer 1

In order to use custom routes within an anonymous controller spec you need to amend the route set in a before block. RSpec already sets up the RESTful routes using resources :anonymous in a before block, and restores the original routes in an after block. So to get your own routes just call draw on @routes and add what you need.

Here's an example from an ApplicationController spec that tests the rescue_from CanCan::AccessDenied

require 'spec_helper'

describe ApplicationController
  controller do
    def access_denied
      raise CanCan::AccessDenied
    end
  end

  before do
    @routes.draw do
      get '/anonymous/access_denied'
    end
  end

  it 'redirects to the root when access is denied' do
    get :access_denied
    response.should redirect_to root_path
  end

  it 'sets a flash alert when access is denied' do
    get :access_denied
    flash.alert.should =~ /not authorized/i
  end
end

Update

Handling for this has been improved somewhere around RSpec 2.12. If your using > 2.12 then you no longer need to hook into @routes.

Draw custom routes for anonymous controllers

Answer 2

I was having a similar problem. In my case the solution was including an :id parameter in the get request in the test.

I.e.

get :test, :id => 1

Check your routes and see if you are missing a certain parameter (probably :id), then add that to the test.

Answer 3

It seems that rspec gives you a set of RESTful routes to use. Thus if you only use standard action names in your anonymous controller, you won't get this problem. To date I've never had a reason to use anything other than 'index'.

describe ApplicationController do
  describe 'respond_with_foo' do
    controller do
      def index
        respond_with_foo
      end
    end

    it 'should respond with foo' do
      get :index
      response.should be_foo
    end
  end
end