Question

I’m setting up some integration tests using capybara and rspec.

In a single test, this works:

describe "SIGN IN, POST post" do

  it "redirects to /posts after creating a new post" do
    visit new_artist_session_path
    fill_in 'Email', :with => '[e-mail]'
    fill_in 'Password', :with => 'password'
    click_link_or_button 'artist_submit'

    visit "/artists/vargas/posts"
    page.should have_content("Upload")
    click_button 'Upload'
    URI.parse(current_url).path.should == "/artists/vargas/posts"
  end
end    

However, I want to move the “sign_in” portion to a before(:all) filter block so that I can DRY up my tests. However it seems that within the before(:all) block, the same code gives this error:

Failure/Error: visit new_artist_session_path
   NameError:
     undefined local variable or method `new_artist_session_path' for #<RSpec::Core::ExampleGroup::Nested_1:0x0000010399e388>

It seems that the routes url helpers are not available from within the before block? How do I remedy this?

Answer 1

it appears that the paths helpers are available only between the “it” and “do”. Just not in the before(:all) method. So I ended up just creating a method for signing in and included it in each test that needed it.