Question

I have the following test written in RSpec:

describe '#create' do
  ...
  it 'redirects users to profile page' do
    response.should redirect_to user_path(user)
  end
  ...
...

And the following in my UsersController:

def create
  @user = User.new(params[:user])
  if @user.save
    redirect_to user_path(@user)
  end
end

Does anyone know why this is returning the following error:

NameError: undefined local variable or method 'user'

I also tried changing this to be root_url in both cases instead of user_path(user) and it gave a different error saying:

Expected response to be a <:redirect>, but was <200>

Does anyone know what the issue might be? I have double-checked my code and have seen similar questions posted online, but haven’t been able to find a solution. Thanks in advance for any help!

Answer 1

It turns out that assigns just creates an instance variable and doesn’t populate it without having another post :create above it.

So, for future reference, here’s the correct code:

it 'redirects to the users profile page' do
  post :create, user: attributes_for(:user)
  response.should redirect_to user_path(assigns :user)
end

However, you must use the assigns :user as Mori suggested in order to create the instance variable in the second part. E.G. You can’t simple do user_path(:user) or user_path(@user).

Hope this helps someone in the future!