Rendering xml with haml through render_template is invalid

Testing RSpec
1

I have some controller tests for validity of restful XML responses.

I’m using haml to generate the xml.

When I test externally with curl the response is well-formed XML.

However when I test the controllers with rspec2 the response is invalid
XML.

The following code is part of an rspec shared_example:

it “renders the requested #{model_ivar_name_lambda.call} as otml
without error” do
@model_class.stub!(:find).with(“37”).and_return(@model_ivar)
get :show, :id => “37”, :format => ‘otml’
response.should render_template(:show)

The response body includes both well formed and invalid XML:

For example running this test:

bin/rspec
spec/controllers/embeddable/open_responses_controller_spec.rb

I’ve extracted part of the response below to show the
element is not closed and is invalid XML

</cssBlocks

Here’s the same extract showing valid XML when the request travels
through the entire app:

curl http://localhost:3000/embeddable/open_responses/3.otml

Haml normally uses the Rails 3 default format of :html5 for rendering
which will render complete elements without a ‘/>’ ending.

However it seems that when going through the whole stack the fact that
we’ve registered ‘otml’ as a ‘text/xml’ mime_type causes
Haml to use the :xhtml format.

Mime::Type.register “text/xml”, :otml

However if I specifically set the Haml format to :xhtml in the spec test
like this:

it “renders the requested #{model_ivar_name_lambda.call} as otml
without error” do
Haml::Template.options[:format] = :xhtml
@model_class.stub!(:find).with(“37”).and_return(@model_ivar)
get :show, :id => “37”, :format => ‘otml’
assigns[@model_ivar_name].should equal(@model_ivar)
response.should render_template(:show)

Now the response is well-formed XML.

But this is disturbing because I am not doing that in the application.

It may be a problem with rspec, rspec-rails, haml or the
ActionController::TestResponse rspec delegates to … ???

2

On Sep 8, 2011, at 8:52 PM, Stephen B. wrote:

it “renders the requested #{model_ivar_name_lambda.call} as otml without error”
do
I’ve extracted part of the response below to show the element is not
closed and is invalid XML

it “renders the requested #{model_ivar_name_lambda.call} as otml without error”
do
It may be a problem with rspec, rspec-rails, haml or the
ActionController::TestResponse rspec delegates to … ???
Are you using a mock model or a real one? If mock, try a real one and
see what happens.

rspec-rails acts as a thin wrapper over the Rails testing framework,
which does a lot of things to simulate the runtime environment for you.
It’s doubtful that rspec is the culprit, but we can rule that out
definitively by writing a similar test in the Rails testing framework:

class ThingControllerTest < ActionController::TestCase
test “…” do
# create a real model
get :show, :id => “37”, :format => ‘otml’
assert_template “show”
end
end

Does that fail the same way?