Question

I have a failing rspec view test but the code works – I probably have a variable incorrectly setup but can’t figure out what it is.

When I display the contents of @incident_report (pp @incident_report) in my spec, it properly displays the record created by FactoryGirl.

When I display the actual rendered content (puts rendered), it shows the values from the the record I created with FactoryGirl…

But the “rendered.should contain(work_order)” spec fails with:

1) incident_reports/show.html displays the work order number on the incident
   Failure/Error: rendered.should contain(work_order)
     expected the following element's content to include "54785":

and none of the data is displayed, only the HTML template

---

spec/views/incident_report/show.html.haml_spec.rb code

require 'spec_helper'

describe "incident_reports/show.html" do
  before(:each) do
    @incident_report = Factory(:incident_report)
  end

  it "displays the work order number on the incident" do
    work_order = @incident_report.work_order
    pp @incident_report    #displays an incident_report, id => 1
    assign(:incident_report, @incident_report)
    render 
    puts rendered  #this DOES have the content from @incident_report
    rendered.should contain("Work Order:")
    rendered.should contain(work_order)
    end
  end

---

show.html.haml code

%h1 Display Incident Report
.navigation
  = link_to 'Edit', edit_incident_report_path(@incident_report)
  |
  \#{link_to 'Back', incident_reports_path}

= render 'form'

.navigation
  = link_to 'Edit', edit_incident_report_path(@incident_report)
  |
  \#{link_to 'Back', incident_reports_path}

Gotta be something really simple I’m overlooking.

Answer 1

Turns out it’s because I was using simple_form and when simple_form displays for a “show” action, it puts the field values into the html as a ‘value=”54785″‘ attribute. If you display it in a browser, the labels and values all show up correctly, but rspec can’t see them.

I had to add

rendered.should have_tag 'input', :with => { :value => "54765", :name => 'incident_report[work_order]' }

to my example to get it to work.

Seems like there should be a better solution but at least now I can continue testing.