Rails 5 Test Prescriptions

What to Expect in a Request Spec

My main goal in a request spec is to test behavior. I find that test-double validations work well here. If you’re interested in testing the final state after the request, in addition to testing the changes to the database, there are a few other substantive things you can test.

After the request has been made, you have access to a response variable. Since request specs wrap Rails integration tests, RSpec does render the view, though if you are testing view behavior, I recommend using system specs, where you have access to the Capybara matchers, and not just the Rails integration spec matchers as described in Chapter 12, ​Minitest​.

After the request has been made, you have access to three special hash variables ...