I am trying to test my rails 3.1 app (I'm learning testing as I go) and I and stuck with how I authenticate a user since normally it sets a session but the tests aren't using the browser so session is an undefined method. I am using the new rails 3.1 has_secure password.
How can I correctly set up and test authentication, as well as test parts of the app that require the user to be authenticated?
My set up is as follows:
rspec 2 capybara guard factory_girl
Thank you!
When you're doing a controller tests the sessions hash is the last parameter. Let's say you have something like this in your session controller tests:
post :create, :user => { :email => "blah@blah.com" }, :color => "red"
This sends through 2 params through to the controller: params[:user] and params[:color].
What about session variables ? Session variables are sent through as the last parameter. If we wanted to set a last_logged_in session variable, we would change the above to:
post :create, {:user => { :email => "blah@blah.com" }, :color => "red"}, {:last_logged_in => Time.now}
Notice the extra set up braces I put around the user and color parameters. Now you will have access to session[:last_logged_in] in your controller.
I highly recommend reading the ror guides. Here's one about controller testing: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/testing.html#functional-tests-for-your-controllers
