RSpec controller testing http://test.host/login error on index spec test

Question

I am creating controller tests for my application. I am just trying to test the index action for my maps_controller.

I created this test for the index to see if it renders.

require 'rails_helper'

RSpec.describe MapsController, type: :controller do
  describe 'GET #index' do
    it 'shows a list of all maps' do
      get :index
      expect(response).to redirect_to maps_path
    end
  end
end

However when I run this spec test I get this error message.

Failure/Error: expect(response).to redirect_to maps_path

Expected response to be a redirect to http://test.host/maps but was a redirect to http://test.host/login. Expected "http://test.host/maps" to be === "http://test.host/login".

I can understand this because it does require a user to get to this path. However, I am unsure why this is trying to go to http://test.host/maps instead of localhost:3000/maps. I was unable to find anything in RSpec docs about setting the test url. How can I set this to go to localhost:3000 instead of test.host?

Answer 1

You can set it globally in your spec_helper.rb file:

Since your spec is set to type: :controller, you would do it this way:

RSpec.configure do |config|
  # other config options

  config.before(:each) do
    @request.host = "localhost:3000"
  end
end

However, as of RSpec 3.5 the preferred method of testing controllers is with a :request spec. So if possible, change your spec to type: :request and then you would do it this way:

RSpec.configure do |config|
  # other config options

  config.before(:each) do
    host! "localhost:3000"
  end
end