Module | Test::Unit::Assertions
In: | lib/action_controller/assertions.rb lib/action_controller/deprecated_assertions.rb

In addition to these specific assertions, you also have easy access to various collections that the regular test/unit assertions can be used against. These collections are:

- assigns: Instance variables assigned in the action that are available for the view.
- session: Objects being saved in the session.
- flash: The flash objects currently in the session.
- cookies: Cookies being sent to the user on this request.

These collections can be used just like any other hash:

      assert_not_nil assigns(:person) # makes sure that a @person instance variable was set
      assert_equal "Dave", cookies[:name] # makes sure that a cookie called :name was set as "Dave"
      assert flash.empty? # makes sure that there's nothing in the flash

For historic reasons, the assigns hash uses string-based keys. So assigns[:person] won‘t work, but assigns["person"] will. To appease our yearning for symbols, though, an alternative accessor has been deviced using a method call instead of index referencing. So assigns(:person) will work just like assigns["person"], but again, assigns[:person] will not work.

On top of the collections, you have the complete url that a given action redirected to available in redirect_to_url.

For redirects within the same controller, you can even call follow_redirect and the redirect will be followed, triggering another action call which can then be asserted against.

## Manipulating the request collections

The collections described above link to the response, so you can test if what the actions were expected to do happened. But sometimes you also want to manipulate these collections in the incoming request. This is really only relevant for sessions and cookies, though. For sessions, you just do:

      @request.session[:key] = "value"

For cookies, you need to manually create the cookie, like this:

      @request.cookies["key"] = CGI::Cookie.new("key", "value")

## Testing named routes

If you‘re using named routes, they can be easily tested using the original named routes methods straight in the test case. Example:

     assert_redirected_to page_url(:title => 'foo')

### Methods

assert_dom_equal assert_dom_not_equal assert_generates assert_no_tag assert_recognizes assert_redirected_to assert_response assert_routing assert_tag assert_template assert_valid clean_backtrace

### External Aliases

assert_template_equal | -> | assert_assigned_equal

### Public Instance methods

assert_dom_equal(expected, actual, message="")

test 2 html strings to be equivalent, i.e. identical up to reordering of attributes

assert_dom_not_equal(expected, actual, message="")

negated form of `assert_dom_equivalent`

assert_generates(expected_path, options, defaults={}, extras = {}, message=nil)

Asserts that the provided options can be used to generate the provided path.

assert_no_tag(*opts)

Identical to assert_tag, but asserts that a matching tag does not exist. (See assert_tag for a full discussion of the syntax.)

assert_recognizes(expected_options, path, extras={}, message=nil)

Asserts that the routing of the given path was handled correctly and that the parsed options match.

assert_redirected_to(options = {}, message=nil)

Assert that the redirection options passed in match those of the redirect called in the latest action. This match can be partial, such that assert_redirected_to(:controller => "weblog") will also match the redirection of redirect_to(:controller => "weblog", :action => "show") and so on.

assert_response(type, message = nil)

Asserts that the response is one of the following types:

- `:success`: Status code was 200
- `:redirect`: Status code was in the 300-399 range
- `:missing`: Status code was 404
- `:error`: Status code was in the 500-599 range

You can also pass an explicit status code number as the type, like assert_response(501)

assert_routing(path, options, defaults={}, extras={}, message=nil)

Asserts that path and options match both ways; in other words, the URL generated from options is the same as path, and also that the options recognized from path are the same as options

assert_tag(*opts)

Asserts that there is a tag/node/element in the body of the response that meets all of the given conditions. The `conditions` parameter must be a hash of any of the following keys (all are optional):

- `:tag`: the node type must match the corresponding value
- `:attributes`: a hash. The node‘s attributes must match the corresponding values in the hash.
- `:parent`: a hash. The node‘s parent must match the corresponding hash.
- `:child`: a hash. At least one of the node‘s immediate children must meet the criteria described by the hash.
- `:ancestor`: a hash. At least one of the node‘s ancestors must meet the criteria described by the hash.
- `:descendant`: a hash. At least one of the node‘s descendants must meet the criteria described by the hash.
- `:sibling`: a hash. At least one of the node‘s siblings must meet the criteria described by the hash.
- `:after`: a hash. The node must be after any sibling meeting the criteria described by the hash, and at least one sibling must match.
- `:before`: a hash. The node must be before any sibling meeting the criteria described by the hash, and at least one sibling must match.
- `:children`: a hash, for counting children of a node. Accepts the keys:
  - `:count`: either a number or a range which must equal (or include) the number of children that match.
  - `:less_than`: the number of matching children must be less than this number.
  - `:greater_than`: the number of matching children must be greater than this number.
  - `:only`: another hash consisting of the keys to use to match on the children, and only matching children will be counted.
- `:content`: the textual content of the node must match the

        given value. This will not match HTML tags in the body of a
        tag--only text.

Conditions are matched using the following algorithm:

- if the condition is a string, it must be a substring of the value.
- if the condition is a regexp, it must match the value.
- if the condition is a number, the value must match number.to_s.
- if the condition is `true`, the value must not be `nil`.
- if the condition is `false` or `nil`, the value must be `nil`.

Usage:

      # assert that there is a "span" tag
      assert_tag :tag => "span"

      # assert that there is a "span" tag with id="x"
      assert_tag :tag => "span", :attributes => { :id => "x" }

      # assert that there is a "span" tag using the short-hand
      assert_tag :span

      # assert that there is a "span" tag with id="x" using the short-hand
      assert_tag :span, :attributes => { :id => "x" }

      # assert that there is a "span" inside of a "div"
      assert_tag :tag => "span", :parent => { :tag => "div" }

      # assert that there is a "span" somewhere inside a table
      assert_tag :tag => "span", :ancestor => { :tag => "table" }

      # assert that there is a "span" with at least one "em" child
      assert_tag :tag => "span", :child => { :tag => "em" }

      # assert that there is a "span" containing a (possibly nested)
      # "strong" tag.
      assert_tag :tag => "span", :descendant => { :tag => "strong" }

      # assert that there is a "span" containing between 2 and 4 "em" tags
      # as immediate children
      assert_tag :tag => "span",
                 :children => { :count => 2..4, :only => { :tag => "em" } }

      # get funky: assert that there is a "div", with an "ul" ancestor
      # and an "li" parent (with "class" = "enum"), and containing a
      # "span" descendant that contains text matching /hello world/
      assert_tag :tag => "div",
                 :ancestor => { :tag => "ul" },
                 :parent => { :tag => "li",
                              :attributes => { :class => "enum" } },
                 :descendant => { :tag => "span",
                                  :child => /hello world/ }

<strong>Please note</strong: assert_tag and assert_no_tag only work with well-formed XHTML. They recognize a few tags as implicitly self-closing (like br and hr and such) but will not work correctly with tags that allow optional closing tags (p, li, td). You must explicitly close all of your tags to use these assertions.

assert_template(expected = nil, message=nil)

Asserts that the request was rendered with the appropriate template file.

assert_valid(record)

ensures that the passed record is valid by active record standards. returns the error messages if not

clean_backtrace() {|| ...}

[Validate]