Rspec2 controller testing with devise

Question

I'm currently new to RSpec and trying to implement some Controller testing with RSpec

In my Rails app, I'm using Devise as my authentication system. My question is, When we test a controller which uses some authentication system (in my case Devise), what is the standard practice?

Is it

1 - to skip the authentication

or

2 - to authenticate the controller

as per the question, following is my controller

require File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/../spec_helper'

describe ProjectsController do
  include Devise::TestHelpers

  p "starting..."

  before(:each) do
    p "in before method"
    @request.env["devise.mapping"] = Devise.mappings[:user]
    sign_in Factory.create(:user)
  end

  it "should create a project" do
   p "should create a project"
  end

  after(:each) do
    @user.destroy unless @user.nil?
  end
end 

I can only see 'starting', But why its not going to "in before method" and "should create a project"

I'm using Rspec2 and Rails2 on Ubuntu.

Answer 1

Check this: Stubbing Devise in rSpec and Rails3.

Standard practice is not skipping authentication, but effectively making sure that a correct user is logged in (for devise).

Referring to your code: have you tried to create some real test? E.g. something as simple as

it "gets index" do
  get :index
  response.status.should be == 200
end

I am not sure why you are not seeing the print-statements. Either rspec skips the empty step (there is no real code), or because something else went wrong. But honestly, I am not even sure if using p inside rspec works.

A tool like rubymine allows you to easily debug your specs if you want to step into it (which imho is a better approach then the scattered p statements).