Testing Routes

Let's check out our app. Run bundle exec rails s in your console and go to localhost:3000 in the browser. Right now we have a generic landing page. Let's change that!

Now let's run our tests and see if anything is failing or pending... oh look -- two pending tests!

• spec/routing/application_routing_spec.rb
• spec/requests/application_spec.rb

Let's add a basic routing expectation to our pended routing test.

# in spec/routing/application_routing_spec.rb

RSpec.describe ApplicationController, type: :routing do
  describe "Basic application routing" do

    it "routes to #index" do
      expect(:get => "/home").to route_to("application#home")
    end

  end
end

Run your test

Alright, we have a failure to chase! Looks like our application#home route is missing. Let's add that to our config/routes.rb file.

# in config/routes.rb

Rails.application.routes.draw do
  get '/home', to: 'application#home', as: 'home'
end

Run tests... woo hoo they pass!

Check out the app

That seemed a little too easy. Let's verify that this route works in the the browser. Reboot your server and navigate to localhost:3000/home

Womp womp! Our tests were passing but our app doesn't work.

Reproduce our app failure in test

Perhaps our requests test will help us reproduce. Navigate to spec/requests/application_spec.rb and let's add an expectation.

# in spec/requests/application_spec.rb

require 'rails_helper'

RSpec.describe "Application", type: :request do
  describe "GET /home" do
    it "successfully gets the home page" do
      get home_path
      expect(response).to have_http_status(200)
    end
  end
end

Now run your tests again... Woo hoo, we reproduced the failure!

Failures:

  1) Application GET /home works! (now write some real specs)
     Failure/Error: get home_path

     AbstractController::ActionNotFound:
       The action 'home' could not be found for ApplicationController
     # ./spec/requests/application_spec.rb:6:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

Finished in 0.19381 seconds (files took 1.75 seconds to load)
11 examples, 1 failure

Chase the failures

Now let's add our controller....
Add the following to your application controller

# in app/controllers/application.rb

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  protect_from_forgery with: :exception

  def home
  end
end

Run your tests... do they pass? Still no...

Failures:

  1) Application GET /home successfully gets the home page
     Failure/Error: get home_path

     ActionController::UnknownFormat:
       ApplicationController#home is missing a template for this request format and variant.

       request.formats: ["text/html"]
       request.variant: []

       NOTE! For XHR/Ajax or API requests, this action would normally respond with 204 No Content: an empty white screen. Since you're loading it in a web browser, we assume that you expected to actually render a template, not nothing, so we're showing an error to be extra-clear. If you expect 204 No Content, carry on. That's what you'll get from an XHR or API request. Give it a shot.
     # ./spec/requests/application_spec.rb:6:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

Finished in 0.33427 seconds (files took 2.43 seconds to load)
11 examples, 1 failure

Looks like we're missing a view. Let's add an application folder under app/views and add a home.html.erb file there.

mkdir app/views/application
touch app/views/application/home.html.erb

Run our test again, and it passes!

Solutions branch

git checkout testing_routing_solutions