Authlogic and Functional Tests

After adding Authlogic to my Rails application, functional tests failed with errors like

Expected response to be a <:success>, but was <302>

This is because the controllers now require a valid session. Here are the steps to easliy accomplish this:

1. Create a named user in fixtures/users.yml, as described in docs. I called my user auto

auto:
  username: autotester
  email: whatever@whatever.com
  password_salt: <%= salt = Authlogic::Random.hex_token %>
  crypted_password: <%= Authlogic::CryptoProviders::Sha512.encrypt("autouserpw" + salt) %>
  persistence_token: <%= Authlogic::Random.hex_token %>

2. Activate AuthLogic at setup time of test

setup :activate_authlogic

within each ControllerTest class (ActionController::TestCase)

3. Add helper to create a session in test_helper.rb

class ActionController::TestCase
  def within_session(user = :auto)
    authlogic_session = UserSession.create(users(user))
    yield if block_given?
    authlogic_session.destroy
  end
end

4. Put a within_session block around the areas of a test which need it. Change tests like this:

test "should get index" do
   get :index
   assert_response :success
   assert_not_nil assigns(:releases)
 end

To tests like this:

test "should get index" do
  within_session do
    get :index
    assert_response :success
    assert_not_nil assigns(:releases)
  end
end

And that's it.