Question

I have a method in my ApplicationHelper that checks to see if there are any items in my basket

module ApplicationHelper
  def has_basket_items?
    basket = Basket.find(session[:basket_id])
    basket ? !basket.basket_items.empty? : false
  end
end

Here is my helper spec that I have to test this:

require 'spec_helper'

describe ApplicationHelper do
  describe 'has_basket_items?' do
    describe 'with no basket' do

      it "should return false" do
        helper.has_basket_items?.should be_false
      end

    end
  end
end

however when I run the test i get

SystemStackError: stack level too deep
/home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/actionpack-3.2.8/lib/action_dispatch/testing/test_process.rb:13:

From debugging this i see that session is being accessed in ActionDispatch::TestProcess from @request.session, and @request is nil. When i access the session from my request specs @request is an instance of ActionController::TestRequest.

My question is can I access the session object from a helper spec? If I can, how? And if I cant what is the best practice to test this method?

****UPDATE****

This was down to having include ActionDispatch::TestProcess in my factories. Removing this include sorts the problem.

Answer 1

can I access the session object from a helper spec?

Yes.

module ApplicationHelper
  def has_basket_items?
    raise session.inspect
    basket = Basket.find(session[:basket_id])
    basket ? !basket.basket_items.empty? : false
  end
end

$ rspec spec/helpers/application_helper.rb

Failure/Error: helper.has_basket_items?.should be_false
  RuntimeError:
    {}

The session object is there and returns an empty hash.

Try reviewing the backtrace in more detail to find the error. stack level too deep usually indicates recursion gone awry.