Rspec tests not finding matching routes

Question

I'm getting unexpected errors when running some Rspec tests. They are

1) PeopleController redirects when loading root should redirect to the splash page Failure/Error: get '/'

ActionController::UrlGenerationError: No route matches {:action=>"/", :controller=>"people"}

...

2) PeopleController redirects when loading /people/show should redirect to the base person path Failure/Error: get '/show' #/show

ActionController::UrlGenerationError: No route matches {:action=>"/show", :controller=>"people"}

I don't understand why Rspec can't find the routes.

From the controller, people_controller.rb:

class PeopleController < ApplicationController

...

    def show
        redirect_to people_path
    end

    def index
        @people = Person.all
    end

...

From the Rspec file people_controller_spec.rb:

describe PeopleController do
    describe "redirects" do
        context "when loading root" do
            it "should redirect to the temp page" do
                get '/'
                last_response.should be_redirect
                follow_redirect!
                last_request.url.should include('/temp')
            end
        end

        context "when loading /people/show" do
            it "should redirect to the base people path" do
                get '/people/show'
                last_response.should be_redirect
                follow_redirect!
                last_request.url.should include('/people')
            end
        end
    end
end

And my routes:

$ rake routes
      Prefix Verb   URI Pattern                  Controller#Action
...
      person GET    /people/:id(.:format)        people#show
...
        root GET    /                            redirect(301, /temp)

routes.rb:

Rails.application.routes.draw do
  resources :temp
  resources :people

  # map '/' to be a redirect to '/temp'
  root :to => redirect('/temp')
end

What am I missing to get the routes from test to match up? I could see the root test not working because it's not technically handled by the People controller (I tried putting it in as a sanity test and only made myself more confused) but the /show failure really makes no sense to me.

zetetic zetetic · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-16T19:21:00

Inside a controller test the method get takes an action argument, not a path. If the resource is a member (as opposed to a collection), you must also specify the id parameter, so:

get :show, id: 1

will call the #show action on an instance of PeopleController, with a params hash including {id: '1'}.

This is described in more detail in the Guide to Testing Rails Applications.

Rspec tests not finding matching routes

1 Answers