How do I write an Rspec controller test that makes sure an e-mail is sent?

Question

Currently in my controller spec I have:

require 'spec_helper'

describe CustomerTicketsController do
  login_user

  describe "POST /create (#create)" do
    # include EmailSpec::Helpers
    # include EmailSpec::Matchers
    it "should deliver the sales alert email" do
      # expect
      customer_ticket_attributes = FactoryGirl.attributes_for(:customer_ticket)
      customer_mailer = mock(CustomerMailer)
      customer_mailer.should_receive(:deliver).
        with(CustomerTicket.new(customer_ticket_attributes))
      # when
      post :create, :customer_ticket => customer_ticket_attributes
    end
  end
end

In my controller I have:

  # POST /customer_tickets
  # POST /customer_tickets.xml
  def create
    respond_to do |format|
      if @customer_ticket.save
        CustomerMailer.sales_alert(@customer_ticket).deliver
        format.html { redirect_to @customer_ticket, notice: 'Customer ticket was successfully created.' }
        format.xml { render xml: @customer_ticket, status: :created, location: @customer_ticket }
      else
        format.html { render action: "new" }
        format.xml { render xml: @customer_ticket.errors, status: :unprocessable_entity }
      end
    end
  end

My test currently produces the following output:

Failures:

  1) CustomerTicketsController POST /create (#create) should deliver the sales alert email
     Failure/Error: customer_mailer.should_receive(:deliver).
       (Mock CustomerMailer).deliver(#<CustomerTicket id: nil, first_name: "firstname1", last_name: "lastname1", company: nil, referral: nil, email: "[email protected]", phone: "555-5555", fax: nil, country: nil, address1: "555 Rodeo Dr.", address2: nil, city: "Beverly Hills", state: "CA", postcode: "90210", question: "The answer to the universe is 4.", type: nil, status: nil, priority: nil, number: nil, cs_rep_id: nil, created_at: nil, updated_at: nil>)
           expected: 1 time
           received: 0 times
     # ./spec/controllers/customer_ticket_controller_spec.rb:13:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

Finished in 0.52133 seconds
1 example, 1 failure

Failed examples:

rspec ./spec/controllers/customer_ticket_controller_spec.rb:9 # CustomerTicketsController POST /create (#create) should deliver the sales alert email

Thank you for looking.

Answer 1

You could check the ActionMailer::Base.deliveries.count to ensure it has incremented by 1.

Something like this (untested)

expect {custom_mailer.deliver}.to change { ActionMailer::Base.deliveries.count }.by(1)