Forum: RSpec rendering xml with haml through render_template is invalid

I have some controller tests for validity of restful XML responses.

I'm using haml to generate the xml.

When I test externally with curl the response is well-formed XML.

However when I test the controllers with rspec2 the response is invalid 
XML.

The following code is part of an rspec shared_example:

   it "renders the requested #{model_ivar_name_lambda.call} as otml 
without error" do
     @model_class.stub!(:find).with("37").and_return(@model_ivar)
     get :show, :id => "37", :format => 'otml'
     response.should render_template(:show)

The response body includes both well formed and invalid XML:

For example running this test:

   bin/rspec 
spec/controllers/embeddable/open_responses_controller_spec.rb

I've extracted part of the response below to show the <OTCssText> 
element is not closed and is invalid XML

   <cssBlocks>
     <OTCssText local_id='otml_css' src='/stylesheets/otml.css'>
   </cssBlocks

Here's the same extract showing valid XML when the request travels 
through the entire app:

   curl http://localhost:3000/embeddable/open_responses/3.otml

   <cssBlocks>
     <OTCssText local_id='otml_css' src='/stylesheets/otml.css' />
   </cssBlocks>

Haml normally uses the Rails 3 default format of :html5 for rendering 
which will render complete elements without a '/>' ending.

However it seems that when going through the whole stack the fact that 
we've registered 'otml' as a 'text/xml' mime_type causes
Haml to use the :xhtml format.

   Mime::Type.register "text/xml", :otml

However if I specifically set the Haml format to :xhtml in the spec test 
like this:

   it "renders the requested #{model_ivar_name_lambda.call} as otml 
without error" do
     Haml::Template.options[:format] = :xhtml
     @model_class.stub!(:find).with("37").and_return(@model_ivar)
     get :show, :id => "37", :format => 'otml'
     assigns[@model_ivar_name].should equal(@model_ivar)
     response.should render_template(:show)

Now the response is well-formed XML.

But this is disturbing because I am not doing that in the application.

It may be a problem with rspec, rspec-rails, haml or the 
ActionController::TestResponse rspec delegates to ... ???

On Sep 8, 2011, at 8:52 PM, Stephen Bannasch wrote:

>  it "renders the requested #{model_ivar_name_lambda.call} as otml without error" 
do
> I've extracted part of the response below to show the <OTCssText> element is not 
closed and is invalid XML
>    <OTCssText local_id='otml_css' src='/stylesheets/otml.css' />
>  it "renders the requested #{model_ivar_name_lambda.call} as otml without error" 
do
> It may be a problem with rspec, rspec-rails, haml or the 
ActionController::TestResponse rspec delegates to ... ???
Are you using a mock model or a real one? If mock, try a real one and 
see what happens.

rspec-rails acts as a thin wrapper over the Rails testing framework, 
which does a lot of things to simulate the runtime environment for you. 
It's doubtful that rspec is the culprit, but we can rule that out 
definitively by writing a similar test in the Rails testing framework:

class ThingControllerTest < ActionController::TestCase
  test "...." do
    # create a real model
    get :show, :id => "37", :format => 'otml'
    assert_template "show"
  end
end

Does that fail the same way?