Setting the HTTP_REFERER in a global before(:all) in Rspec

Question

In order to avoid adding

request.env["HTTP_REFERER"] = '/'

to a before block on every controller_spec file I create, I have tried to add this to the global config (in spec_helper.rb)

config.before(:each) {request.env["HTTP_REFERER"] = '/'}

The problem is, I get the following error:

You have a nil object when you didn't expect it!
The error occurred while evaluating nil.env

Has anyone any pointers on how to implement this correctly?

Cheers!

Answer 1

Have you tried

  config.before(:type => :controller) do
    request.env["HTTP_REFERER"] = "/"
  end

Answer 2

I notice that Matt's answer was 2 years ago, I am not sure what "rspec" version he was using. but for my case, my rspec version=1.3.2, and the code segment doesn't work(always got an error:

You might have expected an instance of Array.
The error occurred while evaluating nil.<<
    from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.3.2/lib/spec/runner/configuration.rb:181:in `__send__'
    from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.3.2/lib/spec/runner/configuration.rb:181:in `add_callback'
    from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.3.2/lib/spec/runner/configuration.rb:101:in `before'
...

), until I change it a bit:

# here the ":each" symbol is very important and necessary.  
# :type => :controller is the "option"
config.before(:each, :type => :controller) do
  request.env["HTTP_REFERER"] = "/"
end

refer to rspec-1.3.2's doc:

append_before(scope = :each, options={}, &proc)
Appends a global before block to all example groups. scope can be any of 
:each (default), :all, or :suite. 
When :each, the block is executed before each example. 
When :all, the block is executed once per example group, before any of its examples are run. 
When :suite the block is run once before the entire suite is run.