how to test all routes in controller with rspec

Question

I'm trying to restrict a few controllers in my app to require a login before any action. I know how to implement it, but not how to write nice tests in rspec for it.

For example, if I want to restrict every action of my users controller to require login, I could have a test like:

describe "authorization" do

describe "for non-signed-in users" do
  let(:user) { FactoryGirl.create(:user) }

  describe "in the Users controller" do

    describe "visiting the index page" do
      before { visit users_path }
      it { should have_selector('title', text: 'Log In') }
    end

    describe "visiting the edit page" do
      before { visit edit_user_path(user) }
      it { should have_selector('title', text: 'Log In') }
    end

    describe "submitting to the update action" do
      before { put user_path(user) }
      specify { response.should redirect_to(login_path) }
    end

     describe "submitting a DELETE request to the Users#destroy action" do
      before { delete user_path(user) }
      specify { response.should redirect_to(root_path) }        
    end

....etc.....

  end
end

Do I need to specify all 7 of my restful routes for every controller I want to test? Seems pretty inefficient. Is there some way to say "before visit any users routes response should redirect to login_path"?

Alexis Delahaye Alexis Delahaye · Accepted Answer · 2019-12-04T11:50:04

I had a similar concern while trying to list and then test all my application routes for 500 errors, and I didn't want to manually add each route (I have 150~ or so) one by one.

I mirrored the code inside the command rake routes, and used ActionDispatch::Routing::RouteWrapper as well as Rails.application.routes.routes to list them.

The wrapper provides an easy way to check what is the controller, verb, and action of a route. From there you just have to filter the routes you want to check and iterate over them while running your test on each one.

context 'all routes' do
    let(:all_app_routes) do
      Rails.application.routes.routes.collect do |route|
        ActionDispatch::Routing::RouteWrapper.new route 
      end.reject(&:internal?)
    end
    context 'in the Users controller' do
      let(:users_controller_routes) do
        all_app_routes.select { |route| route.controller == 'users' }
      end

      it 'all routes should redirect to login' do
        users_controller_routes.each do |route|
          begin
            # reconstruct the path with the route name
            # I did not test the line below, I personnaly kept using get('/' << route.name) as my case was to test the index pages only.
            # but you get the idea: call your http route below (http.rb, net/http, ...)
            send(route.verb, '/' << route.name)
            # will produce something like : get('/users/')

            # test it does indeed redirect
            expect(response.status).to eq(302)
            expect(response.body).to include?('my_redirect_location')

            # you could also continue further testing
            follow_redirect!
            expect(response.body).to include('<div id="login">')
          rescue Exception
            next
            # or fail test depending on what you want to check
            # I had the case of abstract method in controllers that raised exception
          end
        end
      end
    end
  end

I personnaly used this code only to test index methods (select {|route| route.action =='index' }...), as bulk testing create/destroy/new/edit proved to be too difficult (differents required params every time)

how to test all routes in controller with rspec

1 Answers