Rspec Rails Test Error :Failure/Error: JSON.parse(response.body) && JSON::ParserError: 784: unexpected token at ' '

Question

Good evening:

So I am BRAND NEW to the world of testing in rails. I have been following this tutorial on API's & Authentication to try to learn testing:

Scotch.io - build-a-restful-json-api-with-rails-5

Now this tutorial is for Rails 5 (I am using rails 6 - may have something to do with the problem?)

so whats happening is when I run rails exec rspec the tests run fine until I hit this block of my clients_spec.rb // clients controller spec POST tests (shown below):

describe 'Post /loadze_app/api/v1/clients' do
    let(:valid_attributes) { { client_name: 'Mega Client', street_address: '221 some address rd' } }
    context 'when the request is valid' do
      before { post '/loadze_app/api/v1/clients', params: valid_attributes }
      it 'creates a client' do
        expect(json['client_name']).to eq('Mega Client')
      end

      it 'returns status code 201' do
        expect(response).to have_http_status(201)
      end
    end
    context 'when the request is invalid' do
      before { post '/loadze_app/api/v1/clients', params: { street_address: 'Foobar' } }
      it 'returns status code 422' do
        expect(response).to have_http_status(422)
      end
      it 'returns a validation failure message' do
        expect(response.body).to match(/Validation failed: Client name can't be blank/)
      end
    end
  end

When I remove this block and run the test again it all works as it should. So I am at a bit of a loss and struggling to find any relevant fixes on Stack and other resource sites.

this is the error I get when I run rails exec rspec:

  1) Clients API Post /loadze_app/api/v1/clients when the request is valid creates a client
     Failure/Error: JSON.parse(response.body)

     JSON::ParserError:
       784: unexpected token at ''
     # ./spec/support/request_spec_helper.rb:3:in `json'
     # ./spec/requests/clients_spec.rb:47:in `block (4 levels) in <main>'
     # ./spec/rails_helper.rb:42:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'
     # ./spec/rails_helper.rb:41:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'

Here are all the files the error is referencing: I have denoted the line by using ** Line # **

/spec/support/request_spec_helper.rb:3

module RequestSpecHelper
  def json
    JSON.parse(response.body) ** Line 3
  end
end

/spec/requests/clients_spec.rb:47

 describe 'Post /loadze_app/api/v1/clients' do
    let(:valid_attributes) { { client_name: 'Mega Client', street_address: '421 Rundleson Pl N.E' } }
    context 'when the request is valid' do
      before { post '/loadze_app/api/v1/clients', params: valid_attributes }
      it 'creates a client' do
        expect(json['client_name']).to eq('Mega Client') **Line 47**
      end

      it 'returns status code 201' do
        expect(response).to have_http_status(201)
      end
    end
    context 'when the request is invalid' do
      before { post '/loadze_app/api/v1/clients', params: { street_address: 'Foobar' } }
      it 'returns status code 422' do
        expect(response).to have_http_status(422)
      end
      it 'returns a validation failure message' do
        expect(response.body).to match(/Validation failed: Client name can't be blank/)
      end
    end
  end

/spec/rails_helper.rb:41/42

require 'database_cleaner'

require 'spec_helper'
ENV['RAILS_ENV'] ||= 'test'
require File.expand_path('../config/environment', __dir__)

abort("The Rails environment is running in production mode!") if Rails.env.production?
require 'rspec/rails'
# Add additional requires below this line

begin
  ActiveRecord::Migration.maintain_test_schema!
rescue ActiveRecord::PendingMigrationError => e
  puts e.to_s.strip
  exit 1
end

Shoulda::Matchers.configure do |config|
  config.integrate do |with|
    with.test_framework :rspec
    with.library :rails
  end
end

Dir[Rails.root.join('spec/support/**/*.rb')].each { |f| require f }

RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.fixture_path = "#{::Rails.root}/spec/fixtures"
  config.use_transactional_fixtures = true
  config.infer_spec_type_from_file_location!
  config.filter_rails_from_backtrace!
  config.include FactoryBot::Syntax::Methods
  config.include RequestSpecHelper, type: :request

  config.before(:suite) do
    DatabaseCleaner.clean_with(:truncation)
    DatabaseCleaner.strategy = :transaction
  end

  config.around(:each) do |example|
    DatabaseCleaner.cleaning do **Line 41**
      example.run ** Line 42**
    end
  end

end

Any assistance with this problem would be GREATLY appreciated! Please let me know if any more information is required! Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Might need some more context of what the client is doing, but try:

before { post '/loadze_app/api/v1/clients', params: valid_attributes.to_json, as: :json }