Rack Session Access

RackSessionAccess provides rack middleware for 'rack.session' environment management.

Problem

Acceptance testing assumes that you can't directly access an applications session. For example, if you use capybara with selenium webdriver you can't change some session values because your tests use the same browser that accesses the application(via the backend server).

Solution

But what if you still want to change session values? One possible solution is to inject into the application some code that will manage the session independently. If you use rack based framework this gem does it!

Installation

gem install rack_session_access

Using with Rails

Add to Gemfile:

gem 'rack_session_access'

Add RackSessionAccess middleware to rails middleware stack. Add the following inconfig/environments/test.rb:

[MyRailsApp]::Application.configure do |config|
  ...
  # Access to rack session
  config.middleware.use RackSessionAccess::Middleware
  ...
end

Note Ensure you include rack_session_access middleware only for test environment otherwise you will have security issue.

Using with Sinatra

Add to your sinatra application:

class MySinatraApplication < Sinatra::Base
  enable :sessions
  use RackSessionAccess::Middleware if environment == :test
  ...
end

If you use rspec you may prefer to inject middleware only for rspec tests: Put into spec/spec_helper:

MySinatraApplication.configure do |app|
  app.use RackSessionAccess::Middleware
end

Using with Rack builder

Rack::Builder.new do
  ...
  use Rack::Session::Cookie
  use RackSessionAccess::Middleware
  use MyRackApplication
end.to_app

Testing with Capybara

Add to spec/spec_helper.rb

require "rack_session_access/capybara"

Use:

page.set_rack_session to set your desired session data
page.get_rack_session to obtain your application session data
page.get_rack_session_key to obtain certain key of your application session data

Example:

require 'spec_helper'

feature "My feature" do
  given!(:user) { create(:user, email: 'jack@daniels.com') }

  scenario "logged in user access profile page" do
    page.set_rack_session(user_id: user.id)
    visit "/profile"
    expect(page).to have_content("Hi, jack@daniels.com")
  end

  scenario "visit landing page" do
    visit "/landing?ref=123"
    expect(page.get_rack_session_key('ref')).to eq("123")
  end
end

Authlogic integration

module FeatureHelpers
  def logged_as(user)
    page.set_rack_session('user_credentials' => user.persistence_token)
  end
end

Devise integration

module FeatureHelpers
  def logged_as(user)
    # Devise v3.x.x
    page.set_rack_session('warden.user.user.key' => User.serialize_into_session(user).unshift('User'))

    # Devise v4.x.x
    page.set_rack_session('warden.user.user.key' => User.serialize_into_session(user))
  end
end

Authentication helper

Put corresponding implementation of logged_as in spec/support/feature_helpers.rb and include module into rspec config:

RSpec.configure do |config|
  ...
  config.include FeatureHelpers, type: :feature
  ...
end

Start your scenarios with already logged in user:

feature 'User dashboard', type: :feature do
  given(:user) { create(:user) }
  background do
    logged_as user
  end
  scenario 'User reviews a dashboard' do
    ...
  end
end

Notes

Thus we use marshalized data it's possible to set any ruby object into application session hash.

Enjoy!

Running rack_session_access tests

Run to test against Rails4, Sinatra and Rack applications

BUNDLE_GEMFILE=Gemfile.rails4 bundle install
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=Gemfile.rails4 bundle exec rspec -fd spec/

BUNDLE_GEMFILE=Gemfile.rails5 bundle install
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=Gemfile.rails5 bundle exec rspec -fd spec/