Rails 3.1 Rspec Rails 2 - How can I test this controller action?

Question

I need to know how to test this controller action

  def create_mobile
      if mobile_user = MobileUser.authenticate(params[:email], params[:password])
        session[:mobile_user_id] = mobile_user.id
        respond_to do |format|
          format.json { head :ok }
        end
      else
        respond_to do |format|
          format.json { head :unauthorised }
        end
      end
  end

The route is a post request to sessions/create_mobile and as you can see the action only responds to json

My current controller spec looks like this

describe SessionsController, "Logging in" do

  before(:each) do
    @mobile_user = FactoryGirl.create(:valid_mobile_user)
  end

  it "Should log in mobile user" do
    @request.env["HTTP_ACCEPT"] = "application/json"
    post :create_mobile, {:password => @mobile_user.password, :email => @mobile_user.email}
    response.should be_success
  end

  it "should fail log in mobile user" do
    @request.env["HTTP_ACCEPT"] = "application/json"
    post :create_mobile, {:password => 'joe', :email => @mobile_user.email}
    response.should_not be_success
  end

end

The test results in

  1) SessionsController Logging in should log in mobile user
     Failure/Error: response.should be_success
       expected success? to return true, got false
     # ./spec/controllers/sessions_controller_spec.rb:11:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'

So there is either a problem with my application code or there is a problem with my test code but either way there is no problem with the authenticate method as the MobileUser model spec passes which looks like this

  it "should authenticate" do
    mu = FactoryGirl.create(:valid_mobile_user)
    assert_equal 1, MobileUser.count
    assert_equal mu, MobileUser.authenticate(mu.email, mu.password)

  end

Any help in sorting this out greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance

UPDATE As suggested below, using

post :create_mobile, {:password => 'joe', :email => @mobile_user.email} :format => :json

or using

@request.env["HTTP_ACCEPT"] = "application/json"

or a combination of both makes no difference

UPDATE 2 The test has just started working for no reason that I can fathom (other than I never understood why it wasn't working in the first place). Totally strange!

Answer 1

I met the same issue recently. below is my test code

post :create, :login => 'mock_user', :password => 'passwd', :format => :json

expected = {
    :login => 'mock_user'
}.to_json

session[:user_id].should == mock_user.id
response.body.should == expected

The test result is false, caused by response.body is blank. I checked the test.log, and found got 406 unacceptable request error in controller. After googled a lot, I changed to :format => 'json'. Then I got the expected test result.