Rails 5.2.3 converting all params datatype to string when testing using rspec

Question

I am using rails 5.2.3 and testing using rspec-rails (3.8.2), when I send request to rails like this

  let(:params) do
    {
      down_payment: 10_000,
      asking_price: 100_000,
      payment_schedule: 'weekly',
      amortization_period: 5
    }
  end
  it 'works' do
    get :calculate, params: params, format: :json
    expect(response.status).to eq 200
  end

I also tried

  it 'works' do
    get :calculate, params: params, as: :json
    expect(response.status).to eq 200
  end

in rails all integers get converted to string like this

<ActionController::Parameters {"amortization_period"=>"5", "asking_price"=>"100000", "down_payment"=>"10000", "payment_schedule"=>"weekly", "format"=>"json", "controller"=>"payment_amount", "action"=>"calculate", "payment_amount"=>{}} permitted: false>

But if I use curl to send a request I can see integer not being converted to string.

curl -X GET -H "Content-Type: application/json"  -d ‘{"asking_price": 100000 ,"payment_schedule": "monthly", "down_payment": 10000, "amortization_period": 5  }' http://localhost:3000/payment-amount

Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

JSON payloads can contain five value types: string, number, integer, boolean and null.

HTTP query strings are, by contrast, only strings.

By default, request specs use the encoding specified in the HTTP spec - i.e. all parameters are strings. This is why you see the parameters get converted.

If your production system is sending JSON, you need to tell the test to do so too - e.g. by adding as: :json as you did above.