Usage of _path gives a "No route matches.." error

Question

I am following a tutorial of Rails and I have a few pages that I am adding some tests for.

I am trying to use help_path instead of :help in my pages_controller_test :

test "should get help" do
  get help_path
  assert_response :success
  assert_select "title", "Help | #{@base_title}"
end

I added this line in my routes.rb file :

 get  '/help',    to: 'pages#help'

But I get this error :

1) Error: PagesControllerTest#test_should_get_help: ActionController::UrlGenerationError: No route matches {:action=>"/help", :controller=>"pages"} test/controllers/pages_controller_test.rb:62:in `block in '

I have tried a few solutions but none of them solved my issue. I've also tried using this line instead :

match '/home' => 'main_pages#home', :as => :home

But it didn't work either.

My rails version is : 4.2.4 My Ruby version is : ruby 2.1.9p490 (2016-03-30 revision 54437) [x86_64-linux-gnu]

Output of $rake routes :

 Prefix Verb URI Pattern          Controller#Action
 root GET  /                    pages#home
 help GET  /help(.:format)      pages#help
 courses GET  /courses(.:format)   pages#courses
 programs GET  /programs(.:format)  pages#programs
 schools GET  /schools(.:format)   pages#schools
 dashboard GET  /dashboard(.:format) pages#dashboard
 profile GET  /profile(.:format)   pages#profile
 account GET  /account(.:format)   pages#account
 signout GET  /signout(.:format)   pages#signout

EDIT : I can use help_path .. etc in my html code without any issue, but in the test it gives that error. Thank you :)

Answer 1

I've ran your tests using the repo, Rails 4.2.4, Minitest 5.10.2 and the only one test that doesn't pass is the one using get help_path. I put only the 3 tests in order to shorten the post:

PagesControllerTest#test_should_get_help_using_"get_:help" = 0.39 s = .
PagesControllerTest#test_should_get_help_using_"get_help_path" = 0.00 s = E
PagesControllerTest#test_should_get_help_using_"get_'help'" = 0.01 s = .

Finished in 0.405330s, 7.4014 runs/s, 9.8685 assertions/s.

  1) Error:
PagesControllerTest#test_should_get_help_using_"get_help_path":
ActionController::UrlGenerationError: No route matches {:action=>"/help", :controller=>"pages"}
    test/controllers/pages_controller_test.rb:70:in `block in <class:PagesControllerTest>'

3 runs, 4 assertions, 0 failures, 1 errors, 0 skips

What I did:

$ rm -rf Gemfile.lock (because of a json -v 1.8.1 gem error)
$ bundle
$ rake db:migrate
$ rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV=test
$ rake test test/controllers/pages_controller_test.rb -v

What you can use to make the test work with help_path as the route to test specifying the controller and action is to use:

assert_routing asserts that the routing of the given path was handled correctly and that the parsed options (given in the expected_options hash) match path. Basically, it asserts that Rails recognizes the route given by expected_options.

Or:

assert_recognizes asserts that path and options match both ways; in other words, it verifies that path generates options and then that options generates path. This essentially combines assert_recognizes and assert_generates into one step.

Like:

test "should get help using assert_recognizes and help_path" do
  assert_recognizes({controller: 'pages', action: 'help'}, help_path)
  assert_response :success
end

test "should get help using assert_routing and help_path" do
  assert_routing help_path, controller: 'pages', action: 'help'
  assert_response :success
end