How to test routing of AJAX requests with rspec/rails

Question

I have a constraint in my routes to only allow ajax requests to be routed. How do I test this with rspec? Specifically what test would show that /schedules is routable, but only from AJAX.

routes.rb

  class OnlyAjaxRequest
    def matches?(request)
      request.xhr?
    end
  end

  resources :schedules, :constraints => OnlyAjaxRequest.new

I currently have the following passing part of the test to show that a normal GET request is not routable, but I want to know how to test that an AJAX GET request is routable.

spec/routing/schedules_routing_spec.rb

require 'spec_helper'

describe "GET /schedules" do
    it "returns http failure to non AJAX request" do
      {:get => '/schedules'}.should_not be_routable
  end
end

What specifically are you asking? Are you suggesting this test should fail? Do you need help writing other tests? If so, what particular tests are you asking for help with? — Peter Alfvin, Dec 21 '13 at 19:49
Yes, sorry. I'm asking for a test that would be_routable. Like some sort of `{:ajax_get => '/schedules'}.should be_routable` — mazlix, Dec 21 '13 at 21:06

junil · Answer 1 · 2013-12-25T09:48:32.297

2

Try this
get "/schedules",format: :xhr
response.should be_ok

edited Dec 25 '13 at 09:48

answered Dec 25 '13 at 08:33

junil

758
5
12

2

That's giving me an error "ArgumentError: wrong number of arguments (2 for 1)" – mazlix Dec 26 '13 at 16:36

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:53

Would

xhr :get, :index
expect(response).to be_ok

in the schedules controller spec work for your purposes? Understand this isn't directly testing if that route is "routable."

Looking at the route matcher code in rspec-rails, it didn't appear that those matchers support extra options. Later I found this answer:

How to test route constraints with rspec

That explains this better than I could. Their recommendation was to just test your constraint class and trust that Rails routing works as expected. There are a few tests for block/object constraints in the Rails source:

https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/master/actionpack/test/dispatch/routing_assertions_test.rb

Since your main concern is to limit the type of request you will accept and your other test validates that those limits work as expected, to be honest I would stick with just the controller spec approach to test the happy path. If you had more complex constraints that matched different routes based on the request object's properties, I'd probably test the constraint class itself as the other answer suggests.

Gjaldon · Answer 3 · 2013-12-29T19:28:21.077

To test your '/schedules' AJAX route, try the code below:

require 'spec_helper'

describe "GET /schedules" do
  it "returns http success for an AJAX request" do
    {:get => '/schedules', format: :xhr}.should be_routable
  end
end

It turns out the code above won't work as SteveRowley points out in one of the answers. The second argument is ignored so the above code just tests the regular get '/schedules' route.

Since rspec-rails doesn't provide any helpers for testing AJAX routes in a route spec, you're going to have to test it indirectly in a controller spec like:

xhr :get, :index
expect(response).to be_ok

Since you have to test if the AJAX route is working through your controller spec, it'd help to leave a comment in your routing spec stating that AJAX requests are expected to be routable and that this is tested via the controller spec. Having a routing spec that checks that non-AJAX requests for '/schedules' should not be routable doesn't make sense unless paired with another assertion that checks that AJAX requests for '/schedules' should be routable. Having no way to test that through the routing spec, the next best option is to leave a comment and test that indirectly via a controller spec.

This seems like it should be a good test, but it's failing... `Failure/Error: {:get => '/schedules', format: :xhr}.should be_routable expected {:get=>"/schedules", :format=>:xhr} to be routable` — mazlix, Dec 27 '13 at 19:11
The route_to and be_routable matchers ignore all but the first key-value pair in the options hash, so this won't work. See the `matches?` methods in: https://github.com/rspec/rspec-rails/blob/master/lib/rspec/rails/matchers/routing_matchers.rb — Steve Rowley, Dec 28 '13 at 22:44
@SteveRowley is right. The second argument is ignored and doesn't get processed. The code I provided just actually checks for the normal route. It looks like there's no matchers provided for checking if a route works for AJAX. Will change my answer above and provide other recommendations as a work-around. — Gjaldon, Dec 29 '13 at 16:21

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 30 '13 at 15:55

I wrote the answer to the question linked in Steve Rowley's answer, and in my opinion the same advice applies here. Ask yourself -- what am I trying to test? Are you testing whether Rails' routing DSL will apply the routing constraint as advertised? That's not something you need a test for in your application, in my opinion. So you want to test whether the routing constraint will apply to xhr requests but not to non-xhr requests.

For that, you just need a unit test for the routing constraint object itself. Something like

describe OnlyAjaxRequest

  describe "#matches?" do

    subject { OnlyAjaxRequest.new.matches?(req) }

    context "xhr request" do
      let(:req) { double('request', :xhr? => true) }

      it { should be_true }
    end

    context "non-xhr request" do
      let(:req) { double('request', :xhr? => false) }

      it { should be_false }
    end
  end

end

Honestly, in this particular case it's hard for me to see much reason to bother with even these tests, but that's how I'd test what you're trying to test.

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 22 '17 at 08:53

I tested my spec example by stubbing the method xhr? of the class ActionDispatch::Request.

require 'rails_helper'

describe "GET /schedules" do
  it "routes to /schedules when request is an ajax request" do
    allow_any_instance_of(ActionDispatch::Request).to receive(:xhr?).and_return(true)
    expect(get: '/schedules').to be_routable
  end
end

How to test routing of AJAX requests with rspec/rails

5 Answers5