Rails: best way to test an action called remotely?

Question

I was trying out Rails again, this time the 3 version, but I got stuck while writing tests for an action that I only call remotely.

A concrete example:

Controller

class PeopleController < ApplicationController
  def index
    @person = Person.new
  end
  def create
    @person = Person.new(params[:person])
    @person.save
  end
end

View (index.html.erb)

<div id="subscription">
  <%= form_for(@person, :url => { :action => "create" }, :remote => true) do |f| %>
    <%= f.text_field :email %>
    <%= f.submit "Subscribe" %>
  <% end %>
</div>

View (create.js.erb)

<% if @person.errors.full_messages.empty? %>
  $("#subscription").prepend('<p class="notice confirmation">Thanks for your subscription =)</p>');
<% else %>
  $("#subscription").prepend('<p class="notice error"><%= @person.errors.full_messages.last %></p>');
<% end %>

How can I test that remote form submission? I would just like to find out if the notice messages are being presented correctly. But if I try to do just

test "create adds a new person" do
  assert_difference 'Person.count' do
    post :create, :people => {:email => '[email protected]'}
  end
  assert_response :success
end

It will say that the "create" action is missing a template.

How do you guys usually test remote calls?

Answer 1

Could you just use the 'xhr' function instead of the 'post' function? An example can be found at http://weblogs.java.net/blog/2008/01/04/testing-rails-applications, if you search for 'xhr'. But even then, I'm curious, even with a remote call, don't you need to return SOMETHING? Even just an OK header?