Rspec shows different status code than browser

Question

I'm trying to write an rspec test for a custom redirect page in Rails. Basically I've got a wildcard match in routes.rb that gets a page name, and a show method in a "Pages" controller that checks if a partial by that name exists. If it doesn't find a matching partial, it renders a 404 page and sets the status to 404. All this works in the browser, however rspec sees it as a 200 "OK" response, not a 404.

The code: Pages controller show method (partial_exists? is a private method that I've thoroughly tested, and I can verify using the test logs that _missing.html.erb is being rendered as expected when rspec runs)

def show
  @page_name = params[:page_name].to_s.gsub(/\W/,'')
  unless partial_exists?(@page_name)
    render :partial => 'missing', :status => :not_found
  end
end

routes.rb:

match '/' => 'pages#show', :page_name => 'index'
match '*page_name' => 'pages#show'

spec:

require 'spec_helper'

describe PagesController do

render_views

  describe "get page name of request" do
    it "should generate http success for a defined partial" do
      visit '/'
      response.should be_success
    end

    it "should give respond with the 404 missing page for an undefined partial" do
      visit '/blahblahblah'
      response.status.should be(404)
    end
  end

end

The first test runs as expected, and renders _index.html.erb partial with a status code of 200. The second test renders _missing.html.erb (I've verified this by looking at the test logs), but reports a status code of 200, not 404 as expected. When I run it in the browser, it renders _missing.html.erb with a status code 404.

Any ideas?

Right now it's a controller spec. Could that be causing the problem? — bencpeters, Feb 22 '13 at 17:05

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 22 '13 at 23:18

It appears that you are confusing request (feature) specs with controller specs. visit is for use in request specs. For a controller spec, you want something like this:

 describe "get page name of request" do
    it "should generate http success for a defined partial" do
      get :index
      response.should be_success
    end
 end

Use get or post along with the appropriate action name to test the corresponding action in the controller.

Rspec shows different status code than browser

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