Ruby Forum RSpec > Testing render :text without has_text

A controller I'm trying to test simply delivers a text string to the
client, which then demarshalls it to retrieve some objects. I want to
test that the returned string is correct.

I don't want to compare the string character-by-character with
response.has_text because that ties me to the implementation of the
Marshall class. Instead, I just want to demarshall the string and
compare that with the expected objects. To do this, I need RSpec to
give me the complete text string that's rendered by the controller.

Here's the controller:

class StatsController < ApplicationController
  layout nil

  def query
    reports = StatisticsReporter.query params[:query_params]
    render :text => Marshal.dump(reports)
  end
end

And here's the test:

describe StatsController do
   before :each do
      @query_params = { :foo => :bar }
   end

  it "should return a demarshallable string of the reports" do
    reports =  [
      StatisticsReport.new(:date => nil),
      StatisticsReport.new(:bytes_transferred => 0)
    ]
    StatisticsReporter.should_receive(:query).and_return reports

    get :query, :query_params => @query_params

     # PROBLEM CODE (the equality test needs tweaking, but you get the
idea)
     Marshal.load(response.what_goes_here?).should == reports
  end
end

(This code may look familiar to one member of this list...:)

Can this be done?

adthanksvance,

///ark

On May 8, 2008, at 5:26 PM, Mark Wilden wrote:

> Here's the controller:
> And here's the test:
>   ]
>   StatisticsReporter.should_receive(:query).and_return reports
>
>   get :query, :query_params => @query_params
>
>    # PROBLEM CODE (the equality test needs tweaking, but you get the  
> idea)
>    Marshal.load(response.what_goes_here?).should == reports

Try this:

Marshal.load(response.body).should == reports

On May 8, 2008, at 3:38 PM, David Chelimsky wrote:

>> I need RSpec to give me the complete text string that's rendered by  
>> the controller.
>>
>> Try this:
>
> Marshal.load(response.body).should == reports

Dang! I dumped response.methods and tried everything that looked
likely, but I guess I missed that one. Thanks!

Just to preserve my sanity in the future, is there a place where this
is documented?

///ark