Question

I keep getting this error when trying to run a Rspec test as part of the Rubyonrails tutorial

Failures:

1) GET ‘about’ should be successful

 Failure/Error: get 'about'
 RuntimeError:
   @controller is nil: make sure you set it in your test's setup method.
 # ./spec/controllers/pages_controller_spec.rb:27:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'

I have tried everything I can to try to correct it but all have proven futile. Any help will be appreciated.

Here is my spec_helper.rb file

require 'rubygems'
require 'spork'

Spork.prefork do
end
Spork.each_run do
end

ENV["RAILS_ENV"] ||= 'test'
require File.expand_path("../../config/environment", __FILE__)
require 'rspec/rails'

Dir[Rails.root.join("spec/support/**/*.rb")].each {|f| require f}

RSpec.configure do |config|
config.include RSpec::Rails::ControllerExampleGroup
config.mock_with :rspec
config.fixture_path = "#{::Rails.root}/spec/fixtures"
config.use_transactional_fixtures = true
end

pages_controller.rb file:

class PagesController < ApplicationController
 def home
 end

 def contact
 end

 def about
 end
 end

pages_controller_spec.rb file:

require 'spec_helper'

describe PagesController do
  render_views

  describe "GET 'home'" do
    render_views
    it "should be successful" do
      get 'home'
      response.should be_success
    end
  end

  describe "GET 'contact'" do
    render_views
    it "should be successful" do
      get 'contact'
      response.should be_success
    end
  end

end

  describe "GET 'about'" do
    render_views
    it "should be successful" do
      get 'about'
      response.should be_success
    end
  end

routes.rb file:

SampleApp::Application.routes.draw do
  get "pages/home"

  get "pages/contact"

  get "pages/about"

end

btw I have no problem running Spork and autotest.

Answer 1

The problem is the nesting in your tests: the describe PagesController block only wraps the first two tests and not the last one.

It should look like this:

describe PagesController do
  render_views

  describe "GET 'home'" do
    it "should be successful" do
      get 'home'
      response.should be_success
    end
  end

  describe "GET 'contact'" do
    it "should be successful" do
      get 'contact'
      response.should be_success
    end
  end

  describe "GET 'about'" do
    it "should be successful" do
      get 'about'
      response.should be_success
    end
  end
end

See: How do i get rid of @controller is nil error in my tests

p.s. I’ve taken out all the render_views except the one in the top-level describe block — you should only need to call it once for the block (see the specs).