Working with and testing the Rails ActionController reply_with

Question

Sorry in advance for the verbosity of this question. If you are carrying with me, I think you will find this actually quite simple ... it is just hard for me to explain, given my limited knowledge of the Rails domain.

Given this comment in the ActionController commit of August 6th :

 === Builtin HTTP verb semantics

 Rails default renderer holds semantics for each HTTP verb. Depending on the
 content type, verb and the resource status, it will behave differently.

 Using Rails default renderer, a POST request for creating an object could
 be written as:

   def create   
     @user = User.new(params[:user])    
     flash[:notice] = 'User was successfully created.' if @user.save
     respond_with(@user)
       end

 Which is exactly the same as:

   def create
     @user = User.new(params[:user])

     respond_to do |format|
       if @user.save
         flash[:notice] = 'User was successfully created.'
         format.html { redirect_to(@user) }
         format.xml { render :xml => @user, :status => :created, :location => @user }
       else
         format.html { render :action => "new" }
         format.xml { render :xml => @user.errors, :status => :unprocessable_entity }
       end
     end
   end

 The same happens for PUT and DELETE requests.

respond_with. , , , 2 specs , Rails params . , save/else , "" . , .

: "Since the request is a POST, respond_with will check wether @people resource have errors or not. If it has errors, it will render the error object with unprocessable entity status (422)."

, /spec POST (), , " (422)" , , , ?

:

class ClownsController < ApplicationController
  respond_to :html, :json

  def index
    respond_with(@clowns = Clown.all)
  end

  def show
    respond_with(@clown = Clown.find(params[:id]))
  end

  def new
    respond_with(@clown = Clown.new)
  end

  def edit
    respond_with(@clown = Clown.find(params[:id]))
  end

  def create
     @clown = Clown.new(params[:clown])
     flash[:notice] = 'Clown was successfully created.' if @clown.save
     respond_with(@clown) 
  end

  # Replacing def create above with this won't Fail the spec ##
  #
  # def create
  #    @clown = Clown.new(params[:clown])
  #    respond_with(@clown) do |format|
  #      if @clown.save
  #        flash[:notice] = 'Clown was successfully created.'
  #        format.html { redirect_to @clown }
  #      else
  #        format.html { render :action => :new }
  #      end
  #    end
  # end


  def update
    @clown = Clown.find(params[:id])
    flash[:notice] = 'Clown has been updated.' if @clown.update_attributes(params[:clown])
    respond_with(@clown)
  end

  def destroy
    @clown = Clown.find(params[:id])
    flash[:notice] = 'Successfully deleted clown.' if @clown.destroy
    respond_with(@clown)
  end
end

:

$ rspec spec/
.......F....F..............

Failures:

  1) ClownsController POST create with invalid params re-renders the 'new' template
     Failure/Error: response.should render_template("new")
     expecting <"new"> but rendering with <"">.
     Expected block to return true value.
     # (eval):2:in `assert_block'
     # ./spec/controllers/clowns_controller_spec.rb:69:in `block (4 levels) in <top (required)>'

  2) ClownsController PUT update with invalid params re-renders the 'edit' template
     Failure/Error: response.should render_template("edit")
     expecting <"edit"> but rendering with <"">.
     Expected block to return true value.
     # (eval):2:in `assert_block'
     # ./spec/controllers/clowns_controller_spec.rb:107:in `block (4 levels) in <top (required)>'

clowns_controller_spec.rb:

require 'spec_helper'

describe ClownsController do

  def mock_clown(stubs={})
    (@mock_clown ||= mock_model(Clown).as_null_object).tap do |clown|
      clown.stub(stubs) unless stubs.empty?
    end
  end

...

  describe "POST create" do

    describe "with invalid params" do    
      it "re-renders the 'new' template" do
        Clown.stub(:new) { mock_clown(:save => false) }
        post :create, :clown => {}
        response.should render_template("new")
      end
    end

Answer 1

Clown

Clown.stub(:new) { mock_clown(:errors => {:any => 'error'}) }

, response_with , , .