Question

I am trying to write specs for a controller without using fixtures (instead employing mock models). This controller requires a user to be logged in, for which I’m employing AuthLogic, following the author’s recommendations.

describe UsersController do

  def mock_user(stubs={})
    @mock_user ||= mock_model(User, stubs)
  end

  context 'when logged in' do
    before { activate_authlogic }

    it "exposes the logged-in user as @user in response to GET (show)" do
      UserSession.create(mock_user)
      ...
    end

    ...
  end

  ...
end

These examples all fail at the line UserSession.create(...), reporting to the effect of:

Mock 'User_1005' received unexpected message :changed? with (no args)

I’m not sure how to resolve this; is mocking with :changed? => false appropriate?

Answer 1

Iain posted a solution to using mock objects with AuthLogic. To rephrase, the following helpers go into spec_helpers.rb:

def current_user(stubs = {})
  @current_user ||= mock_model(User, stubs)
end

def user_session(stubs = {}, user_stubs = {})
  @current_user_session ||= mock_model(UserSession, {:user => current_user(user_stubs)}.merge(stubs))
end

def login(session_stubs = {}, user_stubs = {})
  UserSession.stub!(:find).and_return(user_session(session_stubs, user_stubs))
end

def logout
  @user_session = nil
end

I’ve incorporated this into my specs, and I find it does exactly what I was hoping. I have working controller specs that exploy mock models for the logged-in user, so now they don’t all break when I add a field to User. Iain’s example of implementing this in a spec is as:

describe SecretsController do
  before { login }
  it "should be very very secret!"
end

P.S. I hate to answer my own question, but this is the answer I was looking for; I just didn’t find it early enough.