Rspec-rails: Signed cookies not available in controller specs - rspec-rails 3.5.0, rails 5.0

Created on 6 Jul 2016 · 19Comments · Source: rspec/rspec-rails

I am unable to test the presence of a signed cookie in a controller. I would expect the test case below to pass and it was passing before I upgraded rails and rspec-rails gems. Is this an issue with rspec-rails or a mistake on my side?

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  helper_method :user_signed_in?
  def user_signed_in?
    cookies.signed[:user_session_key].present?
  end
end

RSpec.describe ApplicationController do
  describe "user_signed_in?" do
    context "when logged in" do
      it "returns true" do
        cookies.signed[:user_session_key] = "1234"
        expect(subject.user_signed_in?).to eq(true)
      end
    end
  end
end

Hacktoberfest Has reproduction case

Source

jasonsof

👍14

Most helpful comment

@ivko999 's solution worked for me - thanks!

Even cleaner, just put it in a spec/support file:

# spec/support/cookies.rb
class ActionDispatch::Cookies::CookieJar
  def encrypted; self; end
  def signed; self; end
  def permanent; self; end # I needed this, too
end

wangthony on 10 Nov 2018

👍7

All 19 comments

This functionality is all Rails as far as I'm aware, have you added the rails-controller-test gem?

JonRowe on 7 Jul 2016

I have a similar problem, I can't set a cookies.encrypted key like I could in Rails 4.2/RSpec 3.4. I was looking at the docs for help, but they seem a little outdated.

Edit: I'm using rails-controller-test and only seems to be a problem when testing an Anonymous controller in ApplicationController.

dsandstrom on 7 Jul 2016

Sample app: https://github.com/dsandstrom/rspec_cookies_5

dsandstrom on 7 Jul 2016

Looks like we have the same issue @dsandstrom, it only seems to be the case when I'm using subject as the controller. I'm also using rails-controller-test gem.

Signed cookies work fine in the Rails application itself, just not when they are set in the controller spec for a test

jasonsof on 7 Jul 2016

Thanks for the issue. Your reproduction spec above is useful, but it'd be great if we had a repository we could clone to reproduce this.

Could you please provide us with a rails app that we can clone that demonstrates the issue. Specifically it'd be great if

1) you could rails new an application and commit
2) make all the changes necessary to reproduce the issue and commit

then, provide us with a description of how to clone your application and reproduce the issue.

Thanks :)

penelopezone on 13 Jul 2016

@samphippen https://github.com/dsandstrom/rspec_cookies_5

Check out tests in application_controller_spec.rb. The first one pases, but the second one, that uses the ApplicationController method, doesn't.

dsandstrom on 13 Jul 2016

Confirmed.

penelopezone on 13 Jul 2016

👍1

I spent some time trying to figure out where the bug is, but was not successful. I also tried to reproduce with minitest, but couldn't figure out how to set an encrypted cookie. I don't have a lot of experience with the built in test framework.

dsandstrom on 13 Jul 2016

I have the same problem. With Rails 4.2.1 all Rspec tests regarding signed cookies passed. However, since I have upgraded to Rails 5.0.0 the value returned for all signed cookies keys is nil.

dczombera on 25 Jul 2016

ae29142142324545a328948e059e8b8118fd7a33 is the commit in rails which introduces this

penelopezone on 9 Sep 2016

the cause is that "subject.cookies" (i.e. the cookies on the controller) returns a different cookiejar object to the cookies in the spec because of this line: https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/ae29142142324545a328948e059e8b8118fd7a33#diff-873380f872919a451b4e8ce9dcbd57f7R22

penelopezone on 9 Sep 2016

👍3

I've been looking into this issue more and found a weird work around: call cookies from the AnonymousController:

def index
  cookies
  render text: "success"
end

The cookie gets encrypted and set correctly, but for some reason, it doesn't get passed along until it's manually access. I have no idea why this works, but hopefully it helps with debugging.

From the linked commit, it looks like we need to send the cookie along with the request, but I couldn't figure out how to do that with neither headers nor env params. There is also a Rails test that kinda does what we want: https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/v5.0.0.1/actionpack/test/dispatch/cookies_test.rb#L597 . However, that seems overly complicated and, again, I couldn't get it to work.

dsandstrom on 15 Oct 2016

👍1

@sgrif hi

penelopezone on 10 Nov 2016

Hi,
a workaround could be this:

cookies.signed[:foo] = 'bar'
allow(controller).to receive(:cookies).and_return(cookies)

So we'll force the controller to use the cookiejar object of the test.

TeamNautilus on 22 Nov 2016

👍4

This issue is not a bug in rspec. It can be reproduced with Rails alone using a normal Rails controller test. I have opened https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/27145 with a reproduction script. This issue can be closed.

sgrif on 22 Nov 2016

👍6

cc @samphippen

mrageh on 3 Dec 2016

Maybe like this?

Put this in config/initializers/signed_cookies_patch_test.rb:

if Rails.env.test?
  class ActionDispatch::Cookies::CookieJar
    def encrypted; self; end
    def signed; self; end
  end
end

ivko999 on 26 Jul 2018

👍1

@ivko999 's solution worked for me - thanks!

Even cleaner, just put it in a spec/support file:

# spec/support/cookies.rb
class ActionDispatch::Cookies::CookieJar
  def encrypted; self; end
  def signed; self; end
  def permanent; self; end # I needed this, too
end

wangthony on 10 Nov 2018

👍7

This worked for me

before(:each) do
  allow_any_instance_of(Rack::Test::CookieJar).to receive(:encrypted) { |object| object }
  allow_any_instance_of(ActionDispatch::Cookies::CookieJar).to receive(:encrypted) { |object| object }
end

It didn't pollute other tests.

I needed both because setting seemed to use rack and reading used action dispatch. Odd but I got green only when both were present.