TestCase to setup logged user

Phoenix Forum Questions / Help
1

Hello
Im looking for a way to improve my controller tests. Currently I am doing something like this

test "lists all menu_items", %{conn: conn, user: user} do
  conn = Plug.Test.init_test_session(conn, user_id: user.id)
  conn = get(conn, Routes.menu_item_path(conn, :index))
  assert html_response(conn, 200) =~ "some html"
end

To setup the user record I tried using this aproach (Using setup_all with database?) but I ran into some database errors when running all tests.

I could use setup instead of setup_all but that makes the test suite very slow.

Another aproach I tried was implementing mocks as José describe here

defmodule MyApp.LoggedUserCase do
  use ExUnit.CaseTemplate
  require Ecto.Query
  setup do
    user = Application.get_env(:my_app, :session_plug_account_module).get_user!(123)
    {:ok, user: user}
  end
end

But some coworkers found it awkward to call Application.get_env(:my_app, :session_plug_account_module) on the authentication plug because it sounds like you are changing code just for the sake of the tests, I dont have a problem with it but others have.

The first attempt was to put some condition on the router to ignore the auth plug but it looks ugly/wrong as hell

pipeline :authenticated do
  if Mix.env() != :test do
    plug MyApp.Plugs.RequireSessionStatus, :authenticated
  end
end
2

This is strange. Are you using bcrypt or similar to hash the user’s password? If so, are you configuring it properly for test environments so that it returns quickly?

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3

The Programming Phoenix book suggests looking for a current_user assign within the same plug that pulls users out of the session.

def call(conn, _opts) do
  user_id = get_session(conn, @session_name)

  cond do
    conn.assigns[:current_user] -> conn
    user = user_id && People.get_user(user_id) -> assign_user(conn, user)
    true -> assign_user(conn, nil)
  end
end

In your tests, simply assign current_user to the conn and you’re good to go.

It notes that this is controversial given that it is for testability. I don’t find it particularly controversial. My CurrentUser plug just happens to pass through a current_user if its already been set, which seems like a pretty reasonable default. And that just happens to make testing easier. :slight_smile:

1 Like
4

Yeah I agree.

That was it!
Thank you :smiley:

2 Likes