RSpec / Capybara not 'visit'-ing in Rails4 app

Question

I have a fairly simple rails app, based off of the first half of the railstutorial.org tutorial. I have a bit of head scratcher here... Capybara doesn't seem to be visiting the page i'm saying to visit. I want to make sure a user is logged in before they can see the products#index action. I have the 'not logged in' test passing fine, but the 'logged in' test keeps failing when it should be passing.

Here's my Product pages spec:

require 'spec_helper'

describe "Product pages" do

  subject { page }

  describe "index" do

    context "when not signed in" do
      before { visit products_path }

      it { should have_title 'Sign in' }
    end

    context "when signed in" do

      let(:user) { FactoryGirl.create(:user) }

      before do
        sign_in user
        visit products_path
      end

      it { should have_title('Listing all products') }

    end
  end 
end

the first test passes, but the second one doesn't. Using some trial and error i was able to figure out that it's going to the homepage (if i put the homepage's title in the should have_title() it passes)

Im pretty new to RSpec, but the user_pages_spec test that is pretty much identical is working a-ok:

require 'spec_helper'

describe "User pages" do

  subject { page }

  describe "index" do

    let(:user) { FactoryGirl.create(:user) }

    before do
      sign_in user
      visit users_path
    end

    it { should have_title('All users') }
    it { should have_content('All users') }
  end
end

what could be causing one to fail and one to pass? is there a way to have rspec spit out more information as to what's happening?

here's my gemfile, if that helps:

source 'https://rubygems.org'
ruby '2.0.0'
#ruby-gemset=micmanager

gem 'rails', '4.0.1'
gem 'pg', '0.15.1'
gem 'bootstrap-sass-rails'
gem 'bcrypt-ruby', '3.1.2'
gem 'faker', '1.1.2'
gem 'will_paginate', '3.0.4'
gem 'bootstrap-will_paginate', '0.0.9' 

group :development, :test do
  gem 'rspec-rails', '2.13.1'
  gem 'guard-rspec', '2.5.0'
  gem 'spork-rails', github: 'sporkrb/spork-rails'
  gem 'guard-spork', '1.5.0'
  gem 'childprocess', '0.3.6'
  gem 'guard-livereload', require: false
  gem 'rack-livereload'
  gem 'rb-fsevent', require: false
  gem 'factory_girl_rails', '4.2.1'
end

group :test do
  gem 'selenium-webdriver', '2.35.1'
  gem 'capybara', '2.1.0'
  gem 'growl', '1.0.3'
end

gem 'sass-rails', '4.0.0'
gem 'uglifier', '2.1.1'
gem 'coffee-rails', '4.0.0'
gem 'jquery-rails', '3.0.4'
gem 'turbolinks', '1.1.1'
gem 'jbuilder', '1.0.2'

group :doc do
  gem 'sdoc', '0.3.20', require: false
end

group :production do
  gem 'rails_12factor', '0.0.2'
end

Any help is greatly appreciated! The only SO question i found like this was: Capybara visit method is not working which isn't any help at all.

thanks!

UPDATES

Products Controller:

class ProductsController < ApplicationController
  before_action :set_product, only: [:show, :edit, :update, :destroy]
  before_action :signed_in_user
  before_action :admin_user, only: [:index, :new, :edit, :update, :destroy]
  # GET /products
  # GET /products.json
  def index
    @products = Product.all
  end
end

The before_actions that are mentioned, are in the sessions_helper file:

    module SessionsHelper

  def sign_in(user)
    remember_token = User.new_remember_token
    cookies.permanent[:remember_token] = remember_token
    user.update_attribute(:remember_token, User.encrypt(remember_token))
    self.current_user = user
  end

  def signed_in?
    !current_user.nil?
  end

  def sign_out
    self.current_user = nil
    cookies.delete(:remember_token)
  end

  def current_user=(user)
    @current_user = user
  end

  def current_user
    remember_token = User.encrypt(cookies[:remember_token])
    @current_user ||= User.find_by(remember_token: remember_token)
  end

  def current_user?(user)
    user == current_user
  end

  def redirect_back_or(default)
    redirect_to(session[:return_to] || default)
    session.delete(:return_to)    
  end

  def store_location
    session[:return_to] = request.url if request.get?
  end

  def signed_in_user
    unless signed_in?
      store_location
      redirect_to signin_url, notice: "Please sign in."
    end
  end

  def correct_user
    @user = User.find(params[:id])
    redirect_to root_url unless current_user?(@user)
  end

  def admin_user
    redirect_to root_url unless current_user.admin?
  end
end

....and after posting all this, i figured it out... i paste the answer below. big h/t to Peter Goldstein for mentioning 'filters' since that's where the issue was...

Can you post the relevant pieces of your ProductsController? The index action as well as any filters? Do you have a controller spec that corresponds to this feature spec that is passing? — Peter Goldstein
Thanks man, your comment actually sent me in the right direction and i sorted this out. — afxjzs

afxjzs afxjzs · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-07T00:10:57

Found the solution:

the before_action :admin_user, only: [:index, :new, :edit, :update, :destroy] should haave been before_action :admin_user, only: [:new, :edit, :update, :destroy] since i don't want to restrict the index action to only admins but rather any logged in user. (originally i did want to do this, then changed my mind)

so it was failing on :admin_user and getting redirected to the home page, thus my error.

my bad.

what did we learn? Check your filters, kids. Always check your filters.

RSpec / Capybara not 'visit'-ing in Rails4 app

1 Answers