Question

I have an Rspec test for a helper method which requires access to my current_user method provided by Devise. The issue is when I use the login_user macro in my tests for helpers they don’t work!

Here is what my test looks like:

describe 'follow_link' do
  before :each do
    login_user
  end

  it "display 'follow' if the curren_user is not following" do
    user = Factory :user
    helper.follow_link(user).should == 'Follow'
  end
end

But it fails with this:

Failure/Error: login_user
 NoMethodError:
   undefined method `visit' for #<RSpec::Core::ExampleGroup::Nested_1::Nested_2:0x007faf8c680090>
# ./spec/support/macros.rb:4:in `login_user'
# ./spec/helpers/users_helper_spec.rb:29:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

And that macro looks like this:

def login_user
  @user = Factory(:user)
  visit new_user_session_path

  # fill in sign in form
  within("#main_container") do
    fill_in "user[email]", with: @user.email
    fill_in "user[password]", with: @user.password
    click_button "Sign in"
  end
end

I’ve required:

require 'spec_helper'

in my test and everything but that method still isn’t available.

Answer 1

Friend ‘visit’ is the method of Capybara which is used for writing integration test cases.

For writing RSpec unit test cases you need to stub the current_user method call and focus on the functionality of the helper method.

describe 'follow_link' do
  before :each do
   @user = Factory :user
   helper.stub(:current_user).and_return(@user)
  end

  it "display 'follow' if the curren_user is not following" do
    helper.follow_link(@user).should == 'Follow'
  end
end