[rspec-users] get to a different controller

[Phillip Koebbe]

Wincent Colaiuta wrote:
>
> I test inherited stuff with shared behaviors. It might be something 
> you could use here.
>
> Basically, I have a bunch of behavior in my ApplicationController, for 
> example, and in my spec/controllers/application_controller_spec.rb 
> file I have a bunch of blocks like this:
>
>   describe ApplicationController, 'protected methods', :shared => true do
>     ...
>   end
>
>   describe ApplicationController, 'parameter filtering', :shared => 
> true do
>     ...
>   end
>
> And I then group them all together in one more shared behavior:
>
>   describe ApplicationController, :shared => true do
>     it_should_behave_like 'ApplicationController protected methods'
>     it_should_behave_like 'ApplicationController parameter filtering'
>     ...
>   end
>
> And finally in all subclasses which inherit I can now just do:
>
>   describe ArticlesController do
>     it_should_behave_like 'ApplicationController'
>     ...
>   end
>
> So the behavior inherited from the superclass is specified, but it is 
> also tested independently by the inheriting subclasses.
>
> I imagine the same idea might be adaptable in some way for your use case.
>
> Cheers,
> Wincent
Hi Wincent,

Thanks for the input. I like the idea of the shared behavior so it gets 
tested at all points of execution. [And I really enjoyed David's "Yay!", 
too. :) ] I am going to keep that in mind as I go forward. In this 
particular case, my dilemma was how to test the behavior in the 
base_controller to begin with. The problem stemmed from the fact that 
there were no actions in the controller to call so I couldn't do a get 
on it. With Matt and David's help, I have achieved what I was originally 
after.  The gist is updated if you are interested:

http://gist.github.com/269544

I'm not sure how to share the behavior now, though. As I look at the 
context that implements the testing of the before_filter, sharing it 
doesn't seem to make sense since it creates a bogus derived class to do 
the testing. If I share the behavior to real derived controllers, it 
doesn't seem to me that they will, in fact, be tested.

Do you have any thoughts on that?

Peace,
Phillip