"assign" to variable in view seems to give nil object

Hello,

I am doing my first steps with rspec and did the following
observation.
I wanted to write a spec for a standard scaffold index view.

Now, my view spec looks like:

describe “/a_details/index.html.erb” do

it “should list all the details of as in an unordered list” do
assign[:a_details] = [‘test’]

render '/a_details/index.html.erb'

response.should have_tag("ul") do
  with_tag("li") do
    with_tag("div", "Name")
    with_tag("div", "Details")
  end
end

end
end

Can someone show me a direction and/or has a solution to this ?

When I run this I get:

ActionView::TemplateError in ‘/a_details/index.html.erb should list
all the details of shoes in an unordered list’
You have a nil object when you didn’t expect it!
You might have expected an instance of Array.
The error occurred while evaluating nil.each
On line #15 of app/views/shoe_details/index.html.erb

12:     <th>Photo quality</th>
13:   </tr>
14:
15: <% @a_details.each do |shoe_detail| %>
16:   <tr>
17:     <td><%=h a_detail.brand %></td>
18:     <td><%=h a_detail.city_photo %></td>

app/views/a_details/index.html.erb:15
haml (3.0.18) rails/./lib/haml/helpers/action_view_mods.rb:13:in

render_without_mock_proxy' spec/views/a_details/index_spec.rb:8 rspec (1.3.0) lib/spec/example/example_methods.rb:40:ininstance_eval’
rspec (1.3.0) lib/spec/example/example_methods.rb:40:in execute' /opt/local/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:53:intimeout’

On Sep 29, 2010, at 2:56 PM, poseid wrote:

assign[:a_details] = [‘test’]
This looks like Rails-2/RSpec-1. If that’s correct, then you want to use
“assigns” instead of “assign”.

HTH,
David

Thanks, David.
You are right, there could be a clash of versions.

Now, “assigns” gives:

index_spec.rb:6: undefined local variable or method assigns' for Spec::Rails::Example::ViewExampleGroup::Subclass_1:Class (NameError) from /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.3.0/lib/spec/example/ example_group_methods.rb:183:inmodule_eval’
from /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.3.0/lib/spec/example/
example_group_methods.rb:183:in subclass' from /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.3.0/lib/spec/example/ example_group_methods.rb:55:indescribe’
from /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.3.0/lib/spec/example/
example_group_factory.rb:31:in `create_example_group’

Maybe I shall start with another clean rails project?

Thanks for your help,
Patrick