# Problems to test controllers which require login

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-to-test-controllers-which-require-login/69145>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [February 16, 2006, 11:28am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-to-test-controllers-which-require-login/69145 "2006-02-16T11:28:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Dirk\_Breuer](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Dirk\_Breuer](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Dirk_Breuer)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 11:28am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-to-test-controllers-which-require-login/69145/1 "2006-02-16T11:28:37Z")

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Hi there,

I have a quite stupid problem with my testing environment. I’m trying to  
test my controllers but every controller with a login rewuirement will  
fail (because there is no logged in user in the session). I realized the  
conceptual problem behind this, but I’m not able to solve it.

What I have done so far:

- Login in the test class as described in the Agile Rails Book. This  
works perfect for the LoginControllerTest (even for sites, that need  
logged in users).

- Extracted the login functionallity in the test\_helper.rb file (again  
as described in the book). But unfortunatly this works only for the  
LoginControllerTest. In every other Controller test I got an error while  
performing this method. (I tried this with the original sources from the  
book, and it doesn’t worked, too).

- The last thing I’ve tried was to send the session information every  
time I request a controller action that requires an authorized user (I  
know this is ugly but was my last hope). My code looks something like  
this:

Again this doesn’t worked out.

Now this list is all I can ask for help. If anybody could help me out  
with this problem.

thanks a lot.

cheers

Dirk

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dirk\_Breuer](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Dirk\_Breuer](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Dirk_Breuer)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 11:35am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-to-test-controllers-which-require-login/69145/2 "2006-02-16T11:35:14Z")

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Just throw this in your test’s setup method

def setup  
…  
@session = @request.session  
@session[:user] = users(:first)  
end

Pat

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dirk\_Breuer](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Dirk\_Breuer](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Dirk_Breuer)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 11:46am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-to-test-controllers-which-require-login/69145/3 "2006-02-16T11:46:05Z")

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Thanks for the fast response Pat. Your adivce works perfectly!

Thanks a lot

Dirk

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dirk\_Breuer](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Dirk\_Breuer](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Dirk_Breuer)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 5:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-to-test-controllers-which-require-login/69145/4 "2006-02-16T17:23:01Z")

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get and post take up to 3 arguments:

action, parameters = nil, session = nil, flash = nil

so

get :action\_that\_requires\_login, {}, { :user\_id =\> 1 }

will get the page, with no parameters, and a session where session  
[:user\_id] == 1

This allow a lot more flexibility in testing…for instance testing  
what happens  
if a user that isn’t logged in tries to access an action.

–  
– Tom M.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dirk\_Breuer](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Dirk\_Breuer](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Dirk_Breuer)\
**Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 12:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-to-test-controllers-which-require-login/69145/5 "2006-02-17T12:11:41Z")

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I’m using the salted login generator with happyness, exept now I’d  
like to test my controllers behind the salted login. I’ve read on the  
mailing list about this issue, and I’ve used the  
pass\_the\_session\_to\_the\_action but without success.

This is a line of the controller tested, I’m passing a param  
(level\_id) and then I pass the user session as in the salted login  
generator tests  
get :show\_level, {:level\_id =\> 1 }, { :user =\> @bob }  
it gets redirected to the userController… so… this is definitly  
bad I think it means the before\_filter hasn’t recognized me.  
@bob is coming from the :users fixture correctly included in the  
current test suite.

?

Thanks,  
Enrico

–  
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil  
is for good men to do nothing”  
Edmund Burke