Testing content_for
After we started writing view specs we came across views similar to this:
<p>Stuff in the main content area</p>
<% content_for "secondary_content" do %>
<p>Stuff that will go in an side panel in the view </p>
<% end %>
Obviously when rendering the view inside the spec, only the blurb about main content area will be in the response.body. For instance the second spec written will fail:
describe "/path/to/view" do
def do_render
render "/path/to/view"
end
it "should have blurb about main content" do
do_render
response.should have_text(/main content/i)
end
##
# This won't pass.
##
it "should have blub about side panel" do
do_render
response.should have_text(/side panel/i)
end
end
However, you can shove something in your spec_helpers.rb to test items inside the content_for blocks.
def content_for(section)
template.send(:instance_variable_get, "@content_for_#{section}") || ""
end
And rewrite your spec like this:
describe "/path/to/view" do
def do_render
render "/path/to/view"
end
it "should have blurb about main content" do
do_render
response.should have_text(/main content/i)
end
##
# This will now pass
##
it "should have blub about side panel" do
do_render
content_for("secondary_content").should match(/side panel/i)
end
end
The have_text() matcher won’t work, but you can use the have_tag().
If you haven’t toyed with content_for, I suggest looking into it. It will help clean and organize your views and layout(s).