“undefined method `env' for nil:NilClass” in &

Question

I'm trying to create a spec for a sign out flow by using factorygirl to create a user and then use Devise's sign_in method to authenticate the user, then use capybara to click the "Sign Out" link.

I'm getting (what seems to me to be) a strange error when I run the spec:

Failures:

  1) Sign out flow successfully redirects to the welcome index (root)
     Failure/Error: Unable to find matching line from backtrace
     NoMethodError:
       undefined method `env' for nil:NilClass
     # /home/vagrant/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p576/gems/devise-3.4.1/lib/devise/test_helpers.rb:24:in `setup_controller_for_warden'

Finished in 0.00226 seconds (files took 3.32 seconds to load)
1 example, 1 failure

Here's the spec:

require 'rails_helper'

describe "Sign out flow" do

  include Devise::TestHelpers

  describe "successfully" do
    it "redirects to the welcome index (root)" do
      user = create(:user)
      sign_in user


      within '.user-info' do
        click_link 'Sign Out'
      end

      expect(current_path).to eq root_path
    end
  end
end

And my user.rb factory:

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :user do
    name "Fake User"
    sequence(:email, 100) { |n| "person#{n}@example.com" }
    password "helloworld"
    password_confirmation "helloworld"
    confirmed_at Time.now
  end
end

The error seems to be triggered simply from the line include Devise::TestHelpers, as I've tried commenting out the entire content of the spec and still get the same error.

I thought the Devise test helpers would work out of the box; did I miss some configuration? Thanks.

Answer 1

In Rails 5 you must include Devise::Test::IntegrationHelpers instead Devise::Test::ControllerHelpers:

# rails_helper.rb
config.include Devise::Test::IntegrationHelpers, type: :feature

See more:

• https://github.com/plataformatec/devise/issues/3913#issuecomment
• https://github.com/plataformatec/devise/pull/4071

Answer 2

My Devise version is 4.2.0 so I just included

config.include Devise::Test::ControllerHelpers, type: :controller

in my rails helper file.

Alternatively you can use the same in your spec as

include Devise::Test::ControllerHelpers

Answer 3

Like others have already said, you're including the Devise::TestHelpers. That's for testing controllers. If you'd still like to automatically login a test user in your integration tests, check out the official Devise Instructions on using it with Capybara.

---

Using Devise with Capybara

Basically, what you need to do is first enable Warden's test mode:

include Warden::Test::Helpers
Warden.test_mode!

Then, (create and) login your user:

user = FactoryGirl.create(:user)
login_as(user, scope: :user)

---

Example:

# spec/features/survey_spec.rb
require 'rails_helper'

feature 'survey app' do
    include Warden::Test::Helpers

    let(:user)   { create(:user) }
    let(:survey) { create(:survey_with_questions) }

    before do
        # Sign the User in
        Warden.test_mode!
        login_as(user, scope: user)
    end

    it 'renders the survey' do
        visit survey_show_path(survey)
        expect(page).to have_content(survey.title)
    end
end

Answer 4

I was having this problem when trying to sign_in a user in a before hook:

before(:context) do
  create(:skill, name: 'Google Maps API'.downcase)
  user = create(:user)
  sign_in user
end

Placing sign_in inside the before hook leads to:

Failure/Error: sign_in user

 NoMethodError:
   undefined method `env' for nil:NilClass

But placing it inside an example works fine:

shared_examples_for('an authenticated resource.') do
  describe 'An authenticated request' do
    it "responds with HTTP status OK" do
      user = create(:user)
      sign_in user
      make_request
      expect(response).to have_http_status(:ok)
    end
  end
end

But this can be improved, placing the sign_in into a before(:example) that will also work:

context 'allow search by keyword' do
  let!(:skill){ create(:skill, name: 'Google Maps API'.downcase) }
  let!(:user) { create(:user) }

  before(:example) { sign_in user }

  it 'finds matching records' do
    get :search, name: "Google Maps API", format: :json
    expect(assigns(:skills).size).to be(1)
  end
  it 'finds records that start with keyword'
  it 'finds records that end with keyword'
  it 'finds records that contains keyword'
end