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Where to test routes in ruby on rails?
Addition:
To be exact, where to apply assertions described on guides and on api?
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We can run all of our tests at once by using the bin/rails test command. Or we can run a single test file by passing the bin/rails test command the filename containing the test cases. This will run all test methods from the test case.
Testing routes can be done both via application tests or container tests. Application tests will likely provide better coverage for routes because routes are typically used to perform transitions and load data, both of which are tested more easily in full context rather than isolation.
TIP: If you ever want to list all the routes of your application you can use rails routes on your terminal and if you want to list routes of a specific resource, you can use rails routes | grep hotel . This will list all the routes of Hotel.
Most methods can be tested by saying, “When I pass in argument X, I expect return value Y.” This one isn't so straightforward though. This is more like “When the user sees output X and then enters value V, expect subsequent output O.” Instead of accepting arguments, this method gets its value from user input.
Routes should be done as part of integration tests. Integration tests are where you test the important work flows of your application - more specifically whether a URL is defined or not seems to be an important workflow.
Your integration test would look like any normal integration test:
# /tests/integration/routes_test.rb
require 'test_helper'
class RoutesTest < ActionController::IntegrationTest
test "route test" do
assert_generates "/photos/1", { :controller => "photos", :action => "show", :id => "1" }
assert_generates "/about", :controller => "pages", :action => "about"
end
end
As to @jemminger's response of not testing routes - While it is Rail's tests that verify that routes.rb works, it's not Rail's responsibility to test whether http://yoursite.com/users is defined in your routes. The caveat is that most route testing could be done in existing integration tests, so specific tests for routes could be redundant.
The specific use case I can think of are all the people that have already, or are going to upgrade from Rails 2 to Rails 3. The code to define routes has changed significantly, and it's better to find out from tests that the routes were upgraded correctly, than from users when they report 404 errors.
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Why do you feel the need to test the routes? Purely to make sure that the routes defined in your routes.rb actually work? If so, then don't. That's not the job of your application's tests to make sure that the framework's internals operate properly - that's the job of the Rails framework's own tests.
If perhaps you have some sort of dynamic/user definable route that you want to test, I'd probably go with integration.
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