response.body in Rspec controller test returns an empty string

Question

I'm trying to build a restful JSON api in Rails using the Devise gem and I have the following code:

users_controller_spec.rb:

require 'rails_helper'

RSpec.describe Api::V1::UsersController, type: :controller do

    describe "PUT/PATCH #update" do
    render_views
    context "when is successfully updated" do

      before(:each) do
        @user = FactoryGirl.create :user
        request.headers['Authorization'] = @user.auth_token
      end

      it "renders the json representation for the updated user" do
        user_response = json_response
        expect(user_response[:email]).to eq "[email protected]"
      end
  end
end

The issue I have is that response.body equals an empty string, which isn't valid JSON and hence I can't do JSON.parse(response.body)

I read elsewhere on SO to include render_views and you can see I've done that, but it makes no difference.

Please let me know if you need more info

Answer 1

In my case, the result was raising a permission error with a blank body because I didn't have a logged in user. Check that your response is a success first.