Question

Update: see end of post for how the specs now work now that I have my specs in spec/requests instead of spec/controllers. Still wondering how to get a valid signed in user for integration tests with my controllers.

I’m working with Devise and CanCan for the first time and am having difficulty doing the most basic of integration tests whereby I’m verifying that a logged in user is…well…logged in. I have read countless posts and answers dealing with Devise and RSpec integration tests (i.e. speeding them up by accessing the session directly via https://github.com/plataformatec/devise/wiki/How-To%3a-Test-with-Capybara, http://schneems.com/post/15948562424/speed-up-capybara-tests-with-devise, and Capybara, RSpec and Devise: any way to make integration tests faster by circumventing slow login and setting session directly?, but I have been unable to even get a standard post working as expected and I’m baffled:

1. Development environment works fine (can log in and get redirected to proper page, with navigation login link changed to logout, etc.).
2. test.log indicates no problems until it does a 302 redirect to http://www.example.com instead of my root_path.

By the plethora of users with similar issues with varying solutions, I’m obviously not the only one who has had this problem as various aspects of the session etc. are unavailable in different scenarios.

Stripped down test:

subject { page }

describe 'should be able to log in' do
  before do
    visit '/users/sign_in'
    user = FactoryGirl.create(:admin)
    #user.add_role :admin
    fill_in 'Username', with: user.username
    fill_in 'Password', with: user.password
    click_on 'Sign in'
  end
  it { should have_link 'Logout' }
end
...

Relevant log.test output:

 Started POST "/users/sign_in" for 127.0.0.1 at 2012-11-06 17:31:10 -0800
 Processing by Devise::SessionsController#create as HTML
 Parameters: {"utf8"=>"✓", "user"=>{"username"=>"username1", "password"=>"[FILTERED]",        "remember_me"=>"0"}, "commit"=>"Sign in"}
 [1m[36mUser Load (0.1ms)[0m  [1mSELECT "users".* FROM "users" WHERE "users"."username" =   'username1' LIMIT 1[0m
 [1m[35m (0.0ms)[0m  SAVEPOINT active_record_1
    [1m[36m (0.0ms)[0m  [1mRELEASE SAVEPOINT active_record_1[0m
 [1m[35m (0.0ms)[0m  SAVEPOINT active_record_1
 [1m[36m (0.1ms)[0m  [1mUPDATE "users" SET "last_sign_in_at" = '2012-11-07   01:31:10.722712', "current_sign_in_at" = '2012-11-07 01:31:10.722712', "last_sign_in_ip" =   '127.0.0.1', "current_sign_in_ip" = '127.0.0.1', "sign_in_count" = 1, "updated_at" = '2012-11-  07 01:31:10.723051' WHERE "users"."id" = 1[0m
 [1m[35m (0.0ms)[0m  RELEASE SAVEPOINT active_record_1
 Redirected to http://www.example.com/
 Completed 302 Found in 12ms (ActiveRecord: 0.0ms)

Stripped down routes.rb:

authenticated :user do
  root :to => 'home#index'
end
root :to => "home#index"
devise_for :users
resources :users

Stripped down Ability:

class Ability
include CanCan::Ability

 def initialize(user)
  user ||= User.new # guest user (not logged in)
  if user.has_role? :admin
    can :manage, :all
  end
  ...

And to be thorough, the current Gemfile:

source 'https://rubygems.org'

gem 'rails', '3.2.8'
gem "bootstrap-sass", "~> 2.1.0.1"
gem 'faker', '1.1.2'
gem 'will_paginate', '~> 3.0.3'
gem 'bootstrap-will_paginate', '~> 0.0.9'
gem 'jquery-rails'
gem 'client_side_validations'
gem 'thin'
gem "devise", "~> 2.1.2"
gem "cancan", "~> 1.6.8"
gem "rolify", "~> 3.2.0"
gem "simple_form", "~> 2.0.4"

group :assets do
   gem 'sass-rails',   '~> 3.2.3'
   gem 'coffee-rails', '~> 3.2.1'
   gem 'uglifier', '>= 1.0.3'
end

group :development, :test do
 gem 'sqlite3', '1.3.5'
 gem "rspec-rails", "~> 2.11.4"
 gem 'guard-rspec', '1.2.1'
 #gem 'listen', github: 'guard/listen', branch: 'polling/double'
 gem 'guard-spork'
 gem 'guard-cucumber'
 gem 'spork', '0.9.2'
 gem "factory_girl_rails", ">= 4.1.0"
end

group :development do
  gem 'annotate', '2.5.0'
  gem "quiet_assets", ">= 1.0.1"
end

 group :test do
  gem 'capybara', ">= 1.1.2"
 gem "email_spec", ">= 1.2.1"
 gem "cucumber-rails", ">= 1.3.0", :require => false
 gem "database_cleaner", ">= 0.9.1"
 gem "launchy", ">= 2.1.2"
 gem 'rb-fsevent', '0.9.1', :require => false
 gem 'growl', '1.0.3'
 gem 'terminal-notifier-guard'
end

group :production do
    gem 'pg', '0.12.2'
 end

There’s another user who had issues with this basic task, but it turned out it was simply a syntax error (see Login integration test with rspec/devise) so I’m sure I’m just missing something very obvious.

Update:

You have got to be kidding me. After leaving it for a couple hours, it turns out I had this spec for some reason in spec/controllers, when simply switching it over to spec/requests made everything green.

I quote:

If you are using Rails, put your Capybara specs in spec/requests or
spec/integration.

Found at https://github.com/jnicklas/capybara#readme

However, I’m still wondering how for future requirements I can do integration tests on my controllers that will need to have a logged in user…. for other non-Devise apps in the past, this has been as simple as something like the following:

describe SomeController do

  let(:user) { FactoryGirl.create(:user) }

  before { valid_sign_in user }

...

where my helper is simply

  def valid_sign_in(user)
    visit signin_path
    fill_in "Email", with: user.email
    fill_in "Password", with: user.password
    uncheck(:remember_me)
    click_button "Sign In"

    # Sign in when not using Capybara as well.
    cookies[:remember_token] = user.remember_token
  end

Answer 1

There are two issues at play:

1. rspec/controller vs rspec/requests

I was attempting to do an integration test under spec/controller. As per https://github.com/jnicklas/capybara#readme, you need to put Capybara specs in spec/requests or spec/integration. As per https://stackoverflow.com/a/5803121/9344:

A request spec is a thin wrapper around
ActionDispatch::IntegrationTest, which doesn’t work like controller
specs (which wrap ActionController::TestCase). Even though there is a
session method available, I don’t think it is supported (i.e. it’s
probably there because a module that gets included for other utilities
also includes that method).

Originally this could be solved with Devise via a helper method something like:

# file: spec/requests_helper.rb
def login(user)
  post_via_redirect user_session_path, 'user[email]' => user.email, 'user[password]' => user.password
end

But the official/latest solution, which I had implemented already (but see point two below for why it didn’t solve my issue), can be found at https://github.com/plataformatec/devise/wiki/How-To:-Test-with-Capybara

2. Devise::HelperTests are for controller/view tests, not integration tests.

If I want to do some tests on a controller, I can use the Devise::TestHelpers (referenced via spec_helper.rb) but even then I don’t get functionality for Capybara integration tests as the Devise::TestHelpers are specifically written for controller/view tests, not integration tests. See rspec & devise test helpers.

In summary, what I wanted to do in a controller test can’t be done because it was really an integration test and the session etc. isn’t available for use in spec/controllers. However, there are some Devise test helpers that can be used to help do controller/view tests.

UPDATE

I revisited this much later, and have now got the Warden helpers functioning on my integration tests. Hurrah! This has taken off 8-10 seconds on my 448 tests. The trick was a new entry on https://github.com/plataformatec/devise/wiki/How-To:-Test-with-Capybara. Specifically:

Capybara-Webkit

If you have trouble using Warden’s login_as method
with the capybara-webkit driver, try setting run_callbacks to false in
the login_as options struct

user = Factory.create(:user) 
login_as(user, :scope => :user,
:run_callbacks => false)

In summary, instead of having to do an actual form fill and post for each time I needed an authenticated user for an integration test, now I just need login_as(user, :scope => :user, :run_callbacks => false) (of course refactored out into a helper method).