What is the difference between 'env' and 'request.env' in Rails Controller?

Question

I'm using rspec to write test for my application. In order to authorization I'm sending token in header:

request.headers['token'] = '000000099'
get :index

In controller side I can read this value by request.env["HTTP_TOKEN"] but env["HTTP_TOKEN"] is empty.

What is the difference between them and how can I set env instead of request.env?

Answer 1

request.env is a ruby hash that contains information about a visiting user’s and server environments. request.env is the standard object that's being used in Rails app to extract important information such as path_info, request_uri etc.

env is empty for your test because rspec-rails bypasses the ActionController::Metal dispatch method.