Session Testing in Rails 2.1

I upgraded one of my Rails apps recently from Rails pre 2.1 to Rails 2.1. I had a couple of expected caveats that needed my attention; like:

• I was able to remove the use of my Flashback plugin because Flash.now became testable
• I was able to use named_scope instead of has_finder
• et al

However, there was one little hitch in my tests that I was not expecting. One of my controller tests was adding a session variable and the controller was looking for that value. Problem was, it kept failing. But … it used to pass.

Here’s what my test code did look like:

def test_update_should_clear_invite_code_from_session_on_success
  @request.session[:invite_code] = invite_code
  post :update, ...
  assert_nil session[:invite_code]
end

And then I was using it with my AssertSession plugin that I’m waiting for Scott Woods to add into AssertRequest (since he emailed me that he would … ahem):

def update
  assert_session {|s| s.must_have(:invite_code); ... }
  ...
  @user = User.find_invited(session[:invite_code])
  ...
end

Notice here that the reference to invite_code is a symbol. As long I only try to access invite_code using Session’s square-bracket method (def \[\]\(key\)) … then no problems; thanks to HashWithIndifferentAccess. My AssertSession plugin, however accesses Session’s data function. It seems that Session (or maybe just TestSession) has turned all keys to strings. Thus, AssertSession cannot match a symbol to a string.

Well okay. I switched every one of the session keys to strings and - sadly - my tests are passing. Ho hum.

For clarity’s sake, here is the new code:

def test_update_should_clear_invite_code_from_session_on_success
  @request.session["invite_code"] = invite_code
  post :update, ...
  assert_nil session["invite_code"]
end

def update
  assert_session {|s| s.must_have("invite_code"); ... }
  ...
  @user = User.find_invited(session["invite_code"])
  ...
end