How do I manipulate the session data in an integration test?
We have a controller that manipulates session data, and I want to see,
passing in certain session data, what comes out.
The session is available in integration tests through module
ActionController::TestProcess
def session
@response.session
end
So if I perform
session[:new_key] = ‘new_value’
session.update
get ‘/some_controller/some_action’
assert_nil session[:new_key]
this will pass, in other words, it is not possible to manipulate the
session used for the next request in this manner. One can only
inspect the session
What can I do?
Stephan
shouldn’t that be @request.session, not @response.session?
On Jul 30, 2:17 pm, Stephan W. removed_email_address@domain.invalid
Jeff Emminger wrote:
shouldn’t that be @request.session, not @response.session?
Thanks for your reply, I’m not clear what you are referring to. The
snippet
def session
@response.session
end
that I pasted is from the module, ActionController::TestProcess
Either way, I set @request.session[:new_key] = ‘new_value’ and it
doesn’t survive calling
get ‘/some_controller/some_action’
The integration test re-initializes the session object for each request.
Still stuck –
Stephan
Jeff Emminger wrote:
ah… i actually haven’t used integration tests yet anyway 
came across this though, seems to deal with simulating multiple users
in an integration test… perhaps it will give you some ideas
http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2006/3/9/integration-testing-in-rails-1-1
On Jul 30, 6:25 pm, Stephan W. removed_email_address@domain.invalid
Well, thanks – they talk about sessions as in “user sessions” ("Bob
logs in, Bob does this, Stacey logs in, Stacey does that…). Whereas
I’m looking at the CGI::Session object that is stored on the server
side, and available as @response.session / @request.session or just
session.
Stephan
I ran into the same problem and never really found a good answer via the
test objects. The only solution I saw was to actually update the
session via a controller. I defined a new action in one of my
controllers from within test_helper (so the action does not exist when
actually runnning the application). I also had to create an entry in
routes. Maybe there’s a better way to update routes while testing.
So from my integration test I can do the following and verfiy:
assert(session[:fake].nil?, “starts empty”)
v = ‘Yuck’
get ‘/user_session’, :fake => v
assert_equal(v, session[:fake], “value was set”)
assert(session[:foo].nil?, "starts empty")
v_id = '2'
get '/user_session', :foo_id => v_id
assert_equal(v, session[:fake], "previous value still set")
assert(!session[:foo].nil?, , "object entry exists")
assert_equal(v_id.to_i, session[:foo].id, "correct object set")
<test_helper.rb>
ENV[“RAILS_ENV”] = “test”
require File.expand_path(File.dirname(FILE) +
“/…/config/environment”)
require ‘test_help’
require ‘my_controller’
Need to be able to set session values for integration tests
class MyController
def user_session
ignore = [‘action’, ‘controller’]
params.each do | key, value|
unless ignore.include?(key)
if (pos = key.index(’_id’)).nil?
session[key.to_sym] = value
else
new_key = key[0,pos]
find_class = new_key.classify.constantize
session[new_key.to_sym] = find_class.find(value.to_i)
end
end
end
redirect_to “/”
end
end
class Test::Unit::TestCase
Added to routes.rb:
map.user_session ‘user_session’, :controller => ‘my’, :action =>
‘user_session’
ah… i actually haven’t used integration tests yet anyway
came across this though, seems to deal with simulating multiple users
in an integration test… perhaps it will give you some ideas
http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2006/3/9/integration-testing-in-rails-1-1
On Jul 30, 6:25 pm, Stephan W. removed_email_address@domain.invalid
Gary W. wrote:
I ran into the same problem and never really found a good answer via the
test objects. The only solution I saw was to actually update the
session via a controller. I defined a new action in one of my
controllers from within test_helper (so the action does not exist when
actually runnning the application). I also had to create an entry in
routes. Maybe there’s a better way to update routes while testing.
Yes, I took the same route, although it seems wrong.
I also couldn’t figure out what happens to the session objects during
integration testing; except it looked like they were copied from one
application call to the next and not reused.
Here is the class I added to test/integration. In my case I was
interested in setting a timestamp. So there is a separate method for
that, “set_time_value”.
One might like to have a method “set_session_value” available in an
IntegrationTest. This method could just invoke the get
‘/session_set/…’
This would hide this rather clumsy implementation.
------- BEGIN FILE test/integration/session_set_controller.rb
ActionController::Routing.possible_controllers << ‘session_set’
class SessionSetController < ApplicationController
Found it impossible to manipulate session values from within an
integration test.
Add
require File.dirname(FILE) + ‘/session_set_controller’
Invoke
get '/session_set/set_value, :key=>‘your_key’,
:value=>‘your_value’
def set_value
session[params[:key].to_sym] = params[:value]
render :nothing => true
end
def set_time_value
session[params[:key].to_sym] = Time.parse(params[:value])
render :nothing => true
end
end
------- END FILE test/integration/session_set_controller.rb ------------
Related Note: I find the use of the term “session” within integration
tests a bit unfortunate (open_session, etc), since there are also these
session objects, which are however different. Maybe replace by
“user_session” ?
Stephan
I did see how to get something into the request’s env for integration
testing:
get ‘/next_page’, nil, {“HTTP_REFERER” =>
‘http://localhost:20/last_page’}
Hey any luck on this issue you have mentioned before? I come across
the same thing.
On Jul 31 2007, 2:17 am, Stephan W. <rails-mailing-l…@andreas-