Question

The idea is to make it so admin users can’t destroy themselves.
I have written the following test:

describe "as admin user" do
  let(:admin) { FactoryGirl.create(:admin) }
  before { valid_signin admin }

  describe "should not be able to delete himself by submitting a DELETE request to the Users#destroy action" do
    specify do
      expect { delete user_path(admin) }.not_to change(User, :count).by(-1)
    end
  end
end

and modified the destroy action thus:

def destroy
  @user = User.find(params[:id])
  unless current_user?(@user)
    User.find(params[:id]).destroy
    flash[:success] = "User destroyed."
    redirect_to users_url
  end
end

(You can only access the destroy action if you’re an admin user).

The test should now pass but it does not. I get the following error message:

Failure/Error: expect { delete user_path(admin) }.not_to change(User, :count).by(-1)
     ActionView::MissingTemplate:
       Missing template users/destroy, application/destroy with {:locale=>[:en], :formats=>[:html], :handlers=>[:erb, :builder, :coffee]}.

I do not understand the missing template error message, and I do not see why the test does not pass.

Answer 1

Try changing your destroy action to something like this and see if your test passes:

def destroy
  user = User.find(params[:id])
  unless current_user?(user)
    user.destroy
    flash[:success] = "User destroyed."
  else
    flash[:error] = "You can't destroy yourself."
  end
  redirect_to users_url
end

I think the issue is that you’re only redirecting to the users_url if you successfully destroy a user. If you don’t (ie the admin is attempting to destroy itself), then there is no redirect, and Rails will begin looking for a view called destroy.html.erb, not find one anywhere, and raise an exception. This is also why the user variable in the method changes from @user to user: a local variable will do instead of an instance variable as it doesn’t need to be used in a view.

If this isn’t the issue, please edit your question to include a link to the Github repo with your current code.