Authenticating and testing LiveViews

Phoenix Forum Questions / Help
,
#1

I’m having trouble testing a LiveView with my Guardian plug.

I have a store that shows a list of products but only to authenticated users. The products are on a LiveView page.
I’ve set up a simple LiveView test (I’ve never written LiveView tests before so I’m not 100% sure this is how you would set it up).

defmodule StoreWeb.PartLiveTest do
  @moduledoc false

  use StoreWeb.ConnCase
  import PacksizeNow.Factory
  import Phoenix.LiveViewTest
  alias StoreWeb.PartLive.Index
  
  test "Returns the live-path to edit an item", %{conn: conn} do

    html = live(conn, "/live/store")
   #assertions to follow below

  end
end

This results in an error:

{:error,
 {:redirect,
  %{
    flash: "SVMNNTY.g2gDdGGGAAACBuBgCPpiwbdwFiAAFRgA.mpLMgb29Cm12wj8XthKTuSFnIu6pD5lffBSfZWJM",
    to: "/sign-in"
  }}}

Which I would expect because this page is piped through a Guardian plug.

In controller tests, we use a method called to_authenticated to authenticate users.

def to_authenticated(%Conn{} = conn, %{} = user), do: GuardianPlug.sign_in(conn, user)

But adding this to my test does not authenticate the user, I still get the same error message. It seems like the LiveView is traversing a different path than the controllers and that sign_in/2 does not work the same way in these tests.

What is the best way to authenticate a session for LiveView tests? Has anyone else used Guardian for authentication and tested LiveViews?

#2

I cannot help your directly with your question, but I can point you to some resources:

Or this upcoming course by @germsvel:

1 Like
#3

Thanks @Exadra37, there are definitely good LiveView resources out there but nothing on how to Authenticate the conn with Guardian before running the tests.

#4

There’s an example in the sense of example code inside the bytepack source code repo linked above, but this is for phx.gen.auth and not specifically for guardian. (but i think it should be possible to adapt it yourself to guardian) The exact file/test can be seen here: https://github.com/dashbitco/bytepack_archive/blob/main/apps/bytepack_web/test/bytepack_web/live/admin/seller_live_test.exs

Then you have the pragmaticstudio.com phoenix paid course which also explains testing a live-view with phx.gen.auth in lesson 29 but it’s very short / not that much material, mostly because it’s also pretty short to do. (But it has a pretty thorough walkthrough of using phx.gen.auth of about 30 mins before it (lesson 28) if you would like to switch over :wink: )

Lastly, I did a github.com wide code search given this query: guardian "Phoenix.LiveViewTest" language:elixir and only one repo/commit came up namely the following: https://github.com/NicFisher/elixir-todo/blob/master/test/todo_web/live_views/live_view_board_test.exs
This is actually a test mixing authenticating live view and guardian, so all these combined should put you well on your way forward hopefully! :slight_smile: If not, you could always post some minimal repo example and people are better able to help through code.

Happy coding!

5 Likes
#5

Thanks @rjk,
NicFisher’s Todo had the answer:

Plug.Test.init_test_session(conn, guardian_default_token: conn.private.guardian_default_token)

was the missing link!

3 Likes