Writing functional tests

Test cases that target our controller actions are referred to as functional tests. Web requests are received, and the desired response is generally a rendered view.

The Rails guide indicates that some ideal functional test types would be as follows:

• Whether a web request succeeded

• Whether the user was redirected to the correct page

• Whether the user was authenticated

• Whether the proper template was rendered as a response

• Whether the correct message shows in a view

As we'll be using test cases that derive from ActionController::TestCase (http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/TestCase.html), each functional test case should only test a single controller method.

Here is an example of a functional test for our ArticlesController:

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

class ArticlesControllerTest < ActionController::TestCase
  fixtures :projects, :roles, :users
  plugin_fixtures :kb_articles, :enabled_modules

  def setup
    User.current = User.find...