I'm in the process of upgrading a Rails 2.3.8 app to Rails 3, and part of that process involved upgrading to RSpec2. I made use of Shoulda, mostly in my controller tests, and I ran into a frustrating issue that hopefully I can prevent for other people with this post.
A simple example controller spec looked like this:
require 'spec_helper'
describe AchievementsController, "GET index" do
before { get :index }
it { should respond_with(:success) }
it { should assign_to(:achievements).with_kind_of(Array) }
it { should assign_to(:members).with_kind_of(Array) }
it { should render_template(:index) }
end
Running this spec with RSpec2 generated this error:
Failures:
1) AchievementsController GET index
Failure/Error: it { should respond_with(:success) }
undefined method `response_code' for nil:NilClass
# gems/activesupport-3.0.0/lib/active_support/whiny_nil.rb:48:in `method_missing'
# (path)shoulda/lib/shoulda/action_controller/matchers/respond_with_matcher.rb:57:in `response_code'
# (path)shoulda/lib/shoulda/action_controller/matchers/respond_with_matcher.rb:48:in `correct_status_code?'
# (path)shoulda/lib/shoulda/action_controller/matchers/respond_with_matcher.rb:30:in `matches?'
# ./spec/controllers/achievements_controller_spec.rb:12
# gems/activesupport-3.0.0/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:239:in `inject'
2) AchievementsController GET index
Failure/Error: it { should assign_to(:achievements).with_kind_of(Array) }
Expected action to assign a value for @achievements
# ./spec/controllers/achievements_controller_spec.rb:13
# gems/ree-1.8.7-2010.02@rails3/gems/activesupport-3.0.0/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:239:in `inject'
3) AchievementsController GET index
Failure/Error: it { should assign_to(:members).with_kind_of(Array) }
Expected action to assign a value for @members
# ./spec/controllers/achievements_controller_spec.rb:14
# gems/ree-1.8.7-2010.02@rails3/gems/activesupport-3.0.0/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:239:in `inject'
The solution is ridiculously simple:
require 'spec_helper'
describe AchievementsController, "GET index" do
before { get :index }
subject { controller } # <- ADD THIS
it { should respond_with(:success) }
it { should assign_to(:achievements).with_kind_of(Array) }
it { should assign_to(:members).with_kind_of(Array) }
it { should render_template(:index) }
end
It makes perfect sense in retrospect, but it's a little frustrating that in
order to find this solution, I had to look through Shoulda's commit log for a
mention of rspec2, which noted a change to its Cucumber features, which
included this subject line.