Why pundit can't find policies in controller tests?

Question

The controller:

class UsersController < ApplicationController
  def index
    ...
    authorize User
  end
  ...

The policy:

class UserPolicy < ApplicationPolicy
  def index
    @user.admin?
  end
end

The test:

class UsersControllerAuthorizationTest < ActionController::TestCase
  tests :users

  def user
    @user ||= create(:user)
  end

  test 'should not authorize ordinary users to access the page' do
    sign_in user
    get :index
    assert_response :error
  end
end

The app fails with Pundit::NotAuthorizedError (not allowed to index? this User) as expected. But the test says:

Pundit::NotDefinedError: unable to find policy UserPolicy for User

Am I doing it wrong? Can I make it find the policy?

UPD It must have to do with rails' autoloading. Calling constantize on 'UserPolicy' makes it autoload app/policies/user_policy.rb in case of the app, and doesn't, in case of the tests.

UPD The problem supposedly laid in spring. After stopping it, the tests now output:

Pundit::NotAuthorizedError: not allowed to index? this User

score 7 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 07 '16 at 03:02

7

To fix this issue, I ran:

bin/spring stop
bin/spring binstub --remove --all
bundle update spring
bundle exec spring binstub --all

answered Jul 07 '16 at 03:02

rylanb

604
6
15

Thanks, saved me a lot of time with Rails 5.0.2 running API-only. – krsyoung Apr 25 '17 at 19:45
Happy to hear that! – rylanb Apr 26 '17 at 19:55
Also worked for me. Thanks. Would not have figured this out, why does this work? – lmiller1990 Aug 05 '17 at 15:52
I'm unsure! But given the spring related errors I tried that out when having the same issues and it cleared out something that needed a restart. – rylanb Aug 07 '17 at 20:33

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 14 '18 at 19:07

In your question, you have:

class UserPolicy < ApplicationPolicy
  def index
    @user.admin?
  end
end

I think that you're missing a question mark:

class UserPolicy < ApplicationPolicy
  def index?                 # <-- Added ? to method name <---
    @user.admin?
  end
end

Why pundit can't find policies in controller tests?

2 Answers2