Controller specs for sub-controllers

Testing RSpec
1

I’m completely new to RSpec (and fairly new to Rails, too.) I’m
working on an existing application that has an Admin::BaseController
and sub-controllers such as Admin:TestimonialsController:

class Admin::BaseController < ApplicationController
end

class Admin::TestimonialsController < Admin::BaseController

def new
  @page_title = "Create New Testimonial"
end

end

I’m trying to write very basic tests for my Testimonials controller,
like so:

[testimonials_controller_spec.rb]

require ‘spec_helper’

describe Admin::TestimonialsController do
integrate_views

describe “GET ‘new’” do
it “should be successful” do
get ‘new’
response.should be_success
end

it "should have the right title" do
  get 'testimonials/new'
  response.should have_tag("title", /Create New Testimonial/)
end

end
end

I’ve created the ‘new’ view and it gets the right title tag, but the
tests fail:

‘Admin::TestimonialsController GET ‘new’ should render the create
testimonial template’ FAILED
expected success? to return true, got false
/Users/Lowell/rails_projects/genlighten_dr/spec/controllers/admin/
testimonials_controller_spec.rb:9:

‘Admin::TestimonialsController GET ‘new’ should have the right title’
FAILED
Expected at least 1 element matching “title”, found 0.
is not true.
/Users/Lowell/rails_projects/genlighten_dr/spec/controllers/admin/
testimonials_controller_spec.rb:14:

I suspect it has something to do with the path to my views. Because
the testimonials sub-controller inherits from the admin
BaseController, both testimonials controllers and views are in
subdirectories, e.g.:

app/controllers/admin/testimonials_controller.rb

and

app/views/admin/testimonials/new.html.erb

Should my tests say something like:

get ‘admin/testimonials/new’ instead of get ‘new’? Or am I making a
less subtle mistake?

Thanks,

Dean

2

On Dec 6, 2010, at 4:29 AM, Dean wrote:

 @page_title = "Create New Testimonial"

describe Admin::TestimonialsController do
response.should have_tag(“title”, /Create New Testimonial/)
expected success? to return true, got false

[email protected]
http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users

No the path shouldn’t matter. When you do
get ‘new’

you’re saying, “make a GET request to the ‘new’ action of this
controller” – it has nothing to do with layouts.

My two guesses is that there’s a 500 error somewhere, or you have a
filter that is redirecting a login page and need to do some setup in
order to get past it.

To check the first guess, tail -f log/test.log when you run your test.
See if there’s an exception backtrace in there.

To check the second guess, inspect the response to see if it’s a
redirect or something else.

Pat