Ruby on Rails Pundit's current_user is nil in integration test - ruby-on-rails-4

Question

I'm using the gems pundit and devise. I have a delete link that only shows up if you are an admin. I have an integration test that I would like to verify that the delete link only shows up for admins.
test 'comment delete link shows when it should' do
log_in_as #admin
get movie_path(#movie)
assert_select 'a[href=?]', movie_comment_path(comments(:one), #movie.id)
end
My test_helper.rb looks like this:
...
class ActiveSupport::TestCase
...
def log_in_as(user, options = {})
password = options[:password] || 'password'
if integration_test?
post user_session_path, 'user[email]' => user.email, 'user[password]' => user.password
else
Devise::TestHelpers.sign_in user
end
end
private
# Returns true inside an integration test.
def integration_test?
defined?(post_via_redirect)
end
end
The response.body looks all right, but indeed there is no delete link. There is one when I run the development server and visit the page myself. I've narrowed this down to the current_user that pundit uses in the policies is being passed in with a value of nil. This is my comment_policy.rb:
class CommentPolicy
attr_reader :current_user, :comment
def initialize(current_user, model)
#current_user = current_user
#comment = model
end
def create?
if #current_user
#current_user.member? or #current_user.content_creator? or #current_user.moderator? or #current_user.admin?
end
end
def destroy?
if #current_user
#current_user == #comment.user or #current_user.moderator? or #current_user.admin?
end
end
end
As a closing remark, I've heard that Rails 5 has opted for integration tests instead of controller tests as we know them from Rails 4 for the default type of tests to be generated for our controllers. If this is the case, devise would be a heck of a lot more useful out of the box when using Rails 5 if the sign_in/sign_out helpers that work in controller tests were made to work in integration tests as well. But would I still have this issue of pundit not knowing what current_user is? I'm assuming this all works fine in controller tests because the current_user is scoped to controllers? Any and all light shed on this topic is much appreciated, but I would really like to figure out how to get integration tests to work with this setup because I have about a billion I want to write right now.

Answer 1

Not that it totally matters, but does it need to be using current_user in the policy or can it just use user in the policy. By this I mean according to the elabs/pundit README on Github I would just use #user and user everywhere instead of current_user. Read the README if I confused you.
Additionally the nil for current_user typically occurs when you don't have a valid CSRF token for your request. When you do this on the website manually by going to localhost:3000 or w/e you are first performing a get on the login path before doing the post on the login path with your credentials. In your integration test I don't seem to see where you are performing that get in order to get the CSRF for your session.
Hope this helps!!!