Rails, Devise, Rspec: Undefined method 'sign_in'

Question

I am trying to write Rspec tests in Rails, using Devise helper methods for signing in and out. The sign_in method is not working. However, it had been working earlier, before a slew of changes to the app.

Things I have tried:

• I am including the test helpers in Rspec.configure.
• Using Warden's login_as
• Clearing the Rails cache.
• Getting rid of Capybara to see if that were causing the issue
• I am not setting the session explicitly in my controller specs (e.g. no valid_session)

So far, no dice. What do I need to do differently to test my controllers with a signed-in user?

Error message:

 OrderItemsController GET #index renders the :index view
 Failure/Error: sign_in :admin
 NoMethodError:
      undefined method `sign_in' for #  <RSpec::ExampleGroups::OrderItemsController_2::GETIndex:0x00000102c002d0>
 # ./spec/controllers/order_items_controller_spec.rb:6:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'

Controller Spec

require 'spec_helper'

describe OrderItemsController do
    before (:each) do
        admin = create(:admin)
        sign_in :admin
    end

    describe "GET #index" do
        it "renders the :index view" do
            get :index
            expect( response ).to render_template :index
        end
    end
end

spec_helper.rb

require 'rspec/rails'
require 'capybara/rspec'

RSpec.configure do |config|

  config.include ApplicationHelper
  config.include ControllersHelper
  config.include UsersHelper
  config.include Devise::TestHelpers, type: :controller
  config.include FactoryGirl::Syntax::Methods

end

Gemfile

group :development, :test do
    gem 'rspec-rails', '~> 3.0.0.beta'
    gem 'capybara'
    gem 'factory_girl_rails'
    gem 'faker'
    gem 'dotenv-rails'
    gem 'guard'
    gem 'guard-annotate'
    gem 'guard-rspec', require: false
    gem 'guard-livereload', require: false
    gem 'foreman'
end

factories/user.rb

FactoryGirl.define do

    factory :user do
        first                   { Faker::Name.first_name }
        last                    { Faker::Name.last_name }
        email                   { Faker::Internet.email }
        admin                   false
        password                "secrets1"
        password_confirmation   "secrets1"
        confirmed_at            Date.today

        factory :admin do
            admin               true
        end
    end
end

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Did you recently upgrade to RSpec 3 like I did? This is from the RSpec 3 documentation:

Automatically Adding Metadata RSpec versions before 3.0.0 automatically added metadata to specs based on their location on the filesystem. This was both confusing to new users and not desirable for some veteran users.

In RSpec 3, this behavior must be explicitly enabled:

​# spec/rails_helper.rb
RSpec.configure do |config|
    config.infer_spec_type_from_file_location!
end

Since this assumed behavior is so prevalent in tutorials, the default configuration generated by rails generate rspec:install enables this.

If you follow the above listed canonical directory structure and have configured infer_spec_type_from_file_location!, RSpec will automatically include the correct support functions for each type.

After I add that configuration snippet, I no longer have to specify the spec type (e.g. type: :controller).