Do routing specs support redirect routes? [RSpec]

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Routing specs/tests specialize in testing whether a route maps to a specific controller and action (and maybe some parameters too).

I dug into the internals of Rails and Journey a bit. RSpec and Rails (basically, some details left out) use Rails.application.routes.recognize_path to answer the question “is this routable?”

For example:

$ rails console
> Rails.application.routes.recognize_path("/business_users/1", method: "GET")
 => {:action=>"show", :controller=>"business_users", :id=>"1"}

However, there’s no controller on the other end of /business_users/1/external_url. In fact, to perform the redirect, Rails has created an instance of ActionDispatch::Routing::Redirect, which is a small Rack application. No Rails controller is ever touched. You’re basically mounting another Rack application to perform the redirection.

To test the redirect, I recommend using a request spec instead (a file in spec/requests). Something like:

require "spec_helper"

describe "external redirection" do
  it "redirects to google.com" do
    get "/business_users/1/external_url"
    response.should redirect_to("http://www.google.com")
  end
end

This tests the route implicitly, and allows you to test against the redirection.

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