Problem

You need to have to functionally test your controller when you are using ActiveScaffold. There are pieces of code that tell you how to do that on a normal ror application (ie without ActiveScaffold), like recipe 7.17 on the Rails Cookbook, or a fragment of code in an Active Scaffold application, but they don’t have the full details.

Solution

Here is an attempt to give some more detailed step by step instructions on how to do it.

1. The migration for the example customer model.

class CreateCustomers < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    # Create customers table
    create_table  :customers do |t|
      t.column  :customer_code, :string, :null => false
      t.column  :created_at, :datetime
      t.column  :updated_at, :datetime
    end
  end
end

2. The customer model, with the extra function to display the customer code

class Customer < ActiveRecord::Base

  has_many    :numbers

  def to_label
    "#{customer_code}"
  end
end

3. The customer controller app/controllers/customers_controller.rb, using the Active Scaffold

class CustomersController < ApplicationController

  active_scaffold :customer do |config|
    config.list.columns = [:customer_code, :numbers, :created_at, :updated_at]
    config.columns[:customer_code].inplace_edit = true
 end

end

4. The fixtures YML file test/fixtures/customers.yml

first_customer:
  id:               1
  customer_code:    123
  created_at:       2007-09-26 11:17:07
  updated_at:       2007-09-26 11:17:07

second_customer:
  id:               2
  customer_code:    456
  created_at:       2007-09-26 11:17:13
  updated_at:       2007-09-26 11:17:13

5. And here are some functions to test some pages and a full CRUD test

require File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/../test_helper'
require 'customers_controller'

class CustomerControllerTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  fixtures  :customers

  def setup
    @controller = CustomersController.new
    @request = ActionController::TestRequest.new
    @response = ActionController::TestResponse.new
  end

  def test_index
    get :index
    assert_response :success
    assert_template 'list'
  end

  def test_new
    get :new
    assert_response :success
    assert_template 'create_form'
  end

  def test_edit
    get :edit, :id => customers(:first_customer).id
    assert_response :success
    assert_template 'update_form'
  end

  def test_show
    get :show, :id => customers(:first_customer).id
    assert_response :success
    assert_template 'show'
  end

  def test_customer_controller_CRUD

    # CREATE
    # Get the number of records
    record_no = Customer.count
    # Create a new record
    post  :create, {"commit"=>"Create", :record=>{"customer_code"=>"890"}}
    # Assert that the record is not nil
    assert_not_nil  assigns("record")
    # Look that the number of records has been increased by 1
    assert_equal  record_no+1, Customer.count

    # UPDATE
    # Get the number of records
    record_no = Customer.count
    # Update a record
    new_customer_code = "987"
    put :update, {"commit"=>"Update",:id=>customers(:first_customer).id,
                                      :record=>{"customer_code"=>new_customer_code}}
    # Assert that the record is not nil
    assert_not_nil  assigns("record")
    # Look that the number of records has stayed the same
    assert_equal  record_no, Customer.count
    # Check that the update took place
    customer = Customer.find(customers(:first_customer).id)
    assert_equal  new_customer_code, customer.customer_code

    # DELETE
    # Get the number of records
    record_no = Customer.count
    # Delete a record
    delete  :destroy, :id => customers(:first_customer).id
    # Look that the number of records has been decreased by 1
    assert_equal  record_no-1, Customer.count
  end

end