Question

I have a Rails 3.1 (RC5) app with Devise and CanCan. Both are configured well and working as expected except that when I run integration tests to ensure that AccessDenied is being redirected as desired, the redirect goes to Devise’s sign in instead of the application root. I can verify in my test that the user is still logged in and can still access applicable parts of the app.

The redirect is defined in this short controller, which the other restricted controllers inherit (instead of directly inheriting ApplicationController).

class AuthorizedController < ApplicationController
  before_filter :authenticate_user!

  rescue_from CanCan::AccessDenied do |exception|
    redirect_to root_url, :alert => exception.message
  end
end

The restricted controllers look like this:

class Admin::UsersController < AuthorizedController
  load_and_authorize_resource
  def index
    @users = User.all.order('name')
  end
  ...
end

I am using the default (ActionDispatch::IntegrationTest) integration test; the only additional testing gems I have are Capybara, Machinist, and Faker (no RSpec, Cucumber, etc.).

My test looks like:

def test_user_permissions
  sign_in users(:user)
  get admin_users_path
  assert_response :redirect
  assert_redirected_to root_url
end

The test fails with:

Expected response to be a redirect to <http://www.example.com/> but was a redirect to <http://www.example.com/users/sign_in>

When I test this by logging in as a restricted user in my dev environment, I am redirected to ‘/’ as expected, but using the same type of user in the integration tests fails.

In the integration tests, the user is not actually being logged out, although the redirect makes it look like that is happening. When I change the test to not test the redirection target and continue trying other URLs, the user is still logged in and the test passes.

Addendum & Solution:

I originally did not include the sign_in method that held the key clue. Here it is:

module ActionController
  class IntegrationTest
    include Capybara::DSL
    def sign_in (user, password = 'Passw0rd')
      sign_out
      visit root_path
      fill_in 'Email',    :with => user.email
      fill_in 'Password', :with => password
      click_button 'Sign in'
      signed_in? user
    end
    ...
  end
end

I was mixing Capybara access methods (visit, click_button, etc.) in sign_in and vanilla integration test access methods (get, etc.) in the test. When I used Webrat (before Capybara) this mixing worked as I expected, but evidently Capybara’s session state is handled separately, so access via the Capybara methods was authenticated, but access via the vanilla integration test methods was not.

Answer 1

You didn’t post your devise config in ApplicationController, but it looks like the devise Identity/Sign-in checks are loading up before the CanCan Authorization checks (which makes sense).

It looks like your test sign in setup isn’t working correctly, because ‘/users/sign_in’ is the default redirect for devise when there isn’t a valid user session.

Because the devise identity check is failing, it’s never hitting your CanCan Authorization check. Why ask what the user can do if there isn’t a user yet.

The before_filters will execute from the base ApplicationController first on up the chain in the order they are defined, so subclass filters after base class filters. This is why I think you’ve got Devise config in your base ApplicationController causing this not to hit CanCan.

If you post your Devise config/code we may be able to help you debug it further.

EDIT / TLDR:

You are seeing a redirect to login because Devise doesn’t think a valid user session exists. Your test “sign_in()” helper isn’t working the way you think it is. That’s why this works in dev mode with a live user session via manual login.