Rendering ActionView without Rails for testing

Question

How can I test my ActionView extensions (e.g. a new helper) without using full Rails stack?

I use RSpec, so I have somehow to render a template from my /spec/views/ folder from spec_helper.rb. What is the best way to do that?

Answer 1

I'll maybe not answer your question but you can use RSpec with the rspec-rails gem. No need then to test outside the Rails stack.

https://github.com/rspec/rspec-rails

Here is an example :

describe "lists/show.html.erb" do
  before(:each) do
    assign :new_link, Link.new
    @link = mock_model(Link,
                       :title => "Link's title",
                       :url => "http://wwww.link.s.url/")
    @list = mock_model(List,
                       :title => "Some title",
                       :links => [@link])
  end

  it "displays the list's title" do
    render
    rendered.should have_content(@list.title)
  end

  it "displays the links's title and URL" do
    render
    rendered.should have_link(@link.title,
                              :href => @link.url)
  end
end

You will have to adapt your Gemfile (see the link beyond) and to run bundle update & rails rspec:install.