How to check for a JSON response using RSpec

Question

I have the following code in my controller   format json   render  json   gt              flashcard    gt   flashcard           lesson       gt   lesson           success      gt  true      In my RSpec controller test I want to verify that a certain scenario does receive a success json response so I had the following line   controller should receive  render  with hash including  success   gt  true     Although when I run my tests I get the following error   Failure Error  controller should receive  render  with hash including  success   gt  false       lt AnnoController 0x00000002de0560 gt   render hash including  success  gt false        expected  1 time      received  0 times   Am I checking the response incorrectly

User · Answer

You can also define a helper function inside spec/support/

module ApiHelpers
  def json_body
    JSON.parse(response.body)
  end
end

RSpec.configure do |config| 
  config.include ApiHelpers, type: :request
end

and use json_body whenever you need to access the JSON response.

For example, inside your request spec you can use it directly

context 'when the request contains an authentication header' do
  it 'should return the user info' do
    user  = create(:user)
    get URL, headers: authenticated_header(user)

    expect(response).to have_http_status(:ok)
    expect(response.content_type).to eq('application/vnd.api+json')
    expect(json_body["data"]["attributes"]["email"]).to eq(user.email)
    expect(json_body["data"]["attributes"]["name"]).to eq(user.name)
  end
end

User · Answer

If you want to take advantage of the hash diff Rspec provides  it is better to parse the body and compare against a hash  Simplest way I ve found   it  asserts json body  do   expected body         my   json       hash   ok      stringify keys    expect JSON parse response body   to eql expected body  end

User · Answer

Another approach to test just for a JSON response  not that the content within contains an expected value   is to parse the response using ActiveSupport   ActiveSupport  JSON decode response body  should not be nil   If the response is not parsable JSON an exception will be thrown and the test will fail

User · Answer

I found a customer matcher here  https   raw github com gist 917903 92d7101f643e07896659f84609c117c4c279dfad have content type rb  Put it in spec support matchers have content type rb and make sure to load stuff from support with something like this in you spec spec helper rb  Dir Rails root join  spec support      rb    each   f  require f    Here is the code itself  just in case it disappeared from the given link   RSpec  Matchers define  have content type do  content type    CONTENT HEADER MATCHER               charset             chain  with charset do  charset       charset   charset   end    match do  response         content  charset    content type header match CONTENT HEADER MATCHER  to a      if  charset        charset    charset  amp  amp  content    content type     else       content    content type     end   end    failure message for should do  response      if  charset        Content type   content type header inspect  should match   content type inspect  with charset    charset       else        Content type   content type header inspect  should match   content type inspect       end   end    failure message for should not do  model      if  charset        Content type   content type header inspect  should not match   content type inspect  with charset    charset       else        Content type   content type header inspect  should not match   content type inspect       end   end    def content type header     response headers  Content-Type     end end

User · Answer

You could parse the response body like this   parsed body   JSON parse response body    Then you can make your assertions against that parsed content   parsed body  foo   should     bar

User · Answer

For Your JSON response you should parse that response for expected results For Instance  parsed response   JSON parse response body  You can check other variables which is included in response like expect parsed response  quot success quot    to eq true  expect parsed response  quot flashcard quot    to eq  quot flashcard expected value quot   expect parsed response  quot lesson quot    to eq  quot lesson expected value quot   expect subject  quot status code quot    to eq 201   I prefer also check keys of JSON response  For Example  expect body as json keys  to match array   quot success quot    quot lesson quot   quot status code quot    quot flashcard quot     Here  We can use should matchers For expected results in Rspec

User · Answer

A lot of the above answers are a bit out of date  so this is a quick summary for a more recent version of RSpec  3 8    This solution raises no warnings from rubocop-rspec and is inline with rspec best practices   A successful JSON response is identified by two things    The content type of the response is application json The body of the response can be parsed without errors   Assuming that the response object is the anonymous subject of the test  both of the above conditions can be validate using Rspec s built in matchers   context  when response is received  do   subject   response        check for a successful JSON response   it   is expected to have attributes content type  include  application json        it   is expected to have attributes body  satisfy    v  JSON parse v            validates OP s condition   it   is expected to satisfy    v  JSON parse v body  key   success       it   is expected to satisfy    v  JSON parse v body   success      true   end   If you re prepared to name your subject then the above tests can be simplified further   context  when response is received  do   subject  response    response      it  responds with a valid content type  do     expect response content type  to include  application json     end    it  responds with a valid json object  do     expect   JSON parse response body    not to raise error   end    it  validates OPs condition  do     expect JSON parse response body  symoblize names  true          to include success  true    end end

User · Answer

Building off of Kevin Trowbridge s answer  response header  Content-Type   should include  application json

User · Answer

When using Rails 5  currently still in beta   there s a new method  parsed body on the test response  which will return the response parsed as what the last request was encoded at   The commit on GitHub  https   github com rails rails commit eee3534b

User · Answer

Simple and easy to way to do this     set some variable on success like  success   gt  true in your controller controller rb render  json   gt    success   gt  true   data   gt  data    on success  spec controller rb parse json   JSON response body  parse json  success   should    true

User · Answer

You can examine the response object and verify that it contains the expected value    expected               flashcard    gt   flashcard           lesson       gt   lesson           success      gt  true   to json get  action   replace with action name   params as necessary response body should     expected   EDIT  Changing this to a post makes it a bit trickier  Here s a way to handle it    it  responds with JSON  do     my model   stub model MyModel  save  gt true      MyModel stub  new  with   these    gt   params      my model       post  create   my model   gt    these    gt   params     format   gt   json     response body should    my model to json   end   Note that mock model will not respond to to json  so either stub model or a real model instance is needed

User · Answer

JSON comparison solution  Yields a clean but potentially large Diff   actual   JSON parse response body  symbolize names  true  expected     foo   bar    expect actual  to eq expected   Example of console output from real data   expected    story  gt   id  gt 1   name  gt  The Shire         got    story  gt   id  gt 1   name  gt  The Shire    description  gt nil   body  gt nil   number  gt 1        compared using         Diff        -1 2  1 2       - story   gt    id  gt 1   name  gt  The Shire         story   gt    id  gt 1   name  gt  The Shire    description  gt nil          Thanks to comment by  floatingrock   String comparison solution  If you want an iron-clad solution  you should avoid using parsers which could introduce false positive equality  compare the response body against a string  e g   actual   response body expected      foo   bar     to json expect actual  to eq expected   But this second solution is less visually friendly as it uses serialized JSON which would include lots of escaped quotation marks   Custom matcher solution  I tend to write myself a custom matcher that does a much better job of pinpointing at exactly which recursive slot the JSON paths differ  Add the following to your rspec macros   def expect response actual  expected status  expected body   nil    expect response  to have http status expected status    if expected body     body   JSON parse actual body  symbolize names  true      expect json eq body  expected body    end end  def expect json eq actual  expected  path         expect actual class  to eq expected class    Type mismatch at path    path     if expected class    Hash     expect actual keys  to match array expected keys    Keys mismatch at path    path       expected keys each do  key        expect json eq actual key   expected key      path     key        end   elsif expected class    Array     expected each with index do  e  index        expect json eq actual index   expected index      path    index         end   else     expect actual  to eq expected    Type   expected class  expected   expected inspect  but got   actual inspect  at path    path     end end   Example of usage 1   expect response response   no content    Example of usage 2   expect response response   ok      story        id  1      name   Shire Burning       revisions                    Example output   Type String expected  Shire Burning  but got  Shire Burnin  at path    story  name   Another example output to demonstrate a mismatch deep in a nested array   Type Integer expected 2 but got 1 at path    story  revisions 0   version   As you can see  the output tells you EXACTLY where to fix your expected JSON

User · Answer

You could look into the  Content-Type  header to see that it is correct   response header  Content-Type   should include  text javascript

User · Answer

There s also the json spec gem  which is worth a look  https   github com collectiveidea json spec

[ruby-on-rails] How to check for a JSON response using RSpec?

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