Testing views that use CanCan and Devise with RSpec

Question

I was trying to test a simple index view, which has following code inside:

- if can? :destroy, MyModel   %th Options 

MyModelsController has following options (Inherited Resources + CanCan + Devise):

class MyModelsController < ApplicationController   inherit_resources   nested_belongs_to :mymodel   before_filter :authenticate_user!   load_and_authorize_resource :project   load_and_authorize_resource :mymodel, :through => :project 

When running specs, it crashes at the line - if can? :destroy, MyModel

Failure/Error: render    ActionView::Template::Error:       undefined method `authenticate' for nil:NilClass 

There's no traceback, nothing to base on...

I thought that maybe I'm not authorized and signed when testing views, but Devise::TestHelpers should only be included in controller tests (and that's how I have it).

I was trying to override method can? in both Ability and the controller, but that gave no effect.

Answer 1

This is described in the CanCan docs for controller testing, and can also be modified to apply to view specs. Here's one way to do it:

require 'spec_helper'  describe "mymodel/index.html.erb" do   before(:each) do     assign(:my_model,mock_model(MyModel))     @ability = Object.new     @ability.extend(CanCan::Ability)     controller.stub(:current_ability) { @ability }   end    context "authorized user" do     it "can see the table header" do       @ability.can :destroy, MyModel       render       rendered.should have_selector('th:contains("Options")')     end   end    context "unauthorized user" do     it "cannot see the table header" do       render       rendered.should_not have_selector('th:contains("Options")')     end   end end