Cannot write/read cookies in spec

[dnagir]

The controller spec below fails for me.

describe SuggestionsController do
  it 'should read/write cookies' do
    cookies[:name] = 'value'
    cookies[:name].should == 'value'
  end

  it 'should preserve cookie' do
    cookies[:name] = 'value'
    get :index
    cookies[:name].should == 'value'
  end

end

Not sure why, as looking at controller_example_group_spec it should work.

[sapientpants]

I'm having the same issue in my specs as well, so it's not just you.

[dchelimsky]

To narrow this down a bit, you can write cookies in the controller and read them in the spec after the action:

# spec
it "sets a cookie" do
  get :index
  cookies[:this].should eq("that")
end
# controller
def index
  cookies[:this] = "that"
end

What is not working is the ability to set a cookie in the spec and read it in the controller.

[dnagir]

I think I was also not able to set cookie in spec and read it after the action from spec.

[dchelimsky]

OK - here's what's up.

There are actually two sets of cookies exposed in a Rails functional test (which is the basis for an RSpec controller spec): @request.cookies and @response.cookies. The object returned by the cookies method is the two set merged (https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/master/actionpack/lib/action_dispatch/testing/test_process.rb#L25), but if want to set cookies on the request, you have to do it explicitly.

@request.cookies["foo"] = "bar"
@request.cookies["foo"].should eq("bar")
cookies["foo"].should eq("bar")

Now rspec-rails-1 did have some hax so that the cookies method returned @request.cookies before the action, but I'm not sure I want to add that to rspec-rails-2 on the grounds that it's not 100% reliable and might lead to confusing results. I think being explicit (request.cookies/response.cookies) is the best way to go. WDYT?

[dnagir]

Personally for me that's absolutely ok. Hopefully other people will not be confused by it. But maybe it would make sense to eliminate the confusion somehow (deprecate cookies so we explicitly use request and response objects?).

[dchelimsky]

It's not RSpec's to deprecate :) All three of these ways to access cookies come directly from Rails.

[dchelimsky]

Documented: http://relishapp.com/rspec/rspec-rails/dir/controller-specs/file/cookies