RSpec Controller test converting hash into String

Question

I have a controller spec for my application, which tests the create method on a controller. The create action actually works fine, but the spec is failing. It seems that it is auto converting the the hash POST param into a string.

let(:coupon) { attributes_for(:coupon) }

describe 'POST #create' do
  it 'should create a new coupon from params' do
    expect {
      post :create, :coupon => coupon
    }.to change(Coupon, :count).by(1)
  end
end

Now, If I do puts coupon it is generating a valid hash of data, and the type is hash. For some reason the controller is receiving a string for params[:coupon]. Only in rspec testing does this happen, when I test in the browse with a POST form it works perfectly fine.

Rspec throws the following message:

NoMethodError:
   undefined method `permit' for #<String:0x00000005062700>
   Did you mean?  print

and if I do puts params[:coupon].class in the controller in rspec it gives me String. Why might it be converting my hash into a string for the POST request, and how can I prevent this ?

I am using Rails 5.0.0 and rspec 3.5.1

Del · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-04 04:33:45Z

2

This exact same behavior showed up for me recently when testing a JSON API endpoint. Originally I had this as my subject:

subject { put :my_endpoint, **input_args }

and an integer value in input_args was getting translated into a string. The fix was to add format: 'json' as an additional keyword argument to put:

subject { put :my_endpoint, **input_args, format: 'json' }

edited Aug 4, 2016 at 4:33

answered Aug 4, 2016 at 4:26

Del

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1 Comment

Patrick Johnson Over a year ago

Unfortunatly this did not fix, and I have already been trying to test it using various JSON functions. My entire coupon hash is being converted into string. In the controller, when using params.require(:coupon), it is getting a string rather than a hash so It cannot access any of the hash's values.

Patrick Johnson · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-04 08:37:31Z

0

It seems that it was an issue with the gem open_taobao somehow transforming my post requests in tests.

answered Aug 4, 2016 at 8:37

Patrick Johnson

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