How do you specify POST params in a Rails test?

Question

Working with Test::Unit and Shoulda. Trying to test Users.create. My understanding is that Rails forms send params for an object like this:

user[email]

Which turns into hash in your action, right?

params[:user][:email]

OK, so in my test I've tried...

setup { post :create, :post => { 'user[email]' => 'invalid@abc' } }

and

setup { post :create, :post => { :user => { :email => 'abc@abcd' } } }

In both cases, over in my action, params[:user] is nil.

Answer 1

post :create, :user => { :email => '[email protected]' }

The general form for all the test methods of get, post, put, delete are as follows:

def post(action_name, params_hash = {}, session_hash = {})

And in tests, the params hash gets directly sent into params of your controller action with no translation of any sort. Even doing integration testing you really shouldnt need to test this string to params translation as its covered very well by the rails framework tests. Plus all testing methods that need params accept a hash in this manner without complaint making things easy for you.

Answer 2

Hey, i see that i shouldn't test the string to params conversion, however i would like to test a custom post request where i parse the request string myself. Is there any way to send a raw post request in a test?

Answer 3

post :create, {:post => {}, :user => {:email => 'abc@abcd'} }

In this case params[:post] is {}, params[:user] is {:email => 'abc@abcd'}, params[:user][:email] is 'abc@abcd'.

post :create, {:post => {:user => {:email => 'abc@abcd'} } }

In this case params[:post][:user][:email] is 'abc@abcd'