Testing Abilities

It can be difficult to thoroughly test user permissions at the functional/integration level because there are often many branching possibilities. Since CanCan handles all permission logic in a single Ability class this makes it easy to have a solid set of unit test for complete coverage.

The can? method can be called directly on any Ability (like you would in the controller or view) so it is easy to test permission logic.

test "user can only destroy projects which he owns" do
  user = User.create!
  ability = Ability.new(user)
  assert ability.can?(:destroy, Project.new(:user => user))
  assert ability.cannot?(:destroy, Project.new)
end

RSpec

If you are testing the Ability class through RSpec there is a be_able_to matcher available. This checks if the can? method returns true.

require "cancan/matchers"
# ...
ability.should be_able_to(:destroy, Project.new(:user => user))
ability.should_not be_able_to(:destroy, Project.new)

Pro way ;)

require "cancan/matchers"
# ...
describe "User" do
  describe "abilities" do
    subject { ability }
    let(:ability){ Ability.new(user) }
    let(:user){ nil }

    context "when is an account manager" do
      let(:user){ Factory(:accounts_manager) }

      it{ should be_able_to(:manage, Account.new) }
    end
  end
end

Custom matcher, make test code more sense:

    # e.g.:
    # @user.should have_ability(:create, for: Post.new)
    # @user.should have_ability([:create, :read], for: Post.new)
    # @user.should have_ability({create: true, read: false, update: false, destroy: true}, for: Post.new)
    RSpec::Matchers.define :have_ability do |ability_hash, options = {}|
      match do |user|
        ability         = Ability.new(user)
        target          = options[:for]
        @ability_result = {}
        ability_hash    = {ability_hash => true} if ability_hash.is_a? Symbol # e.g.: :create => {:create => true}
        ability_hash    = ability_hash.inject({}){|_, i| _.merge({i=>true}) } if ability_hash.is_a? Array # e.g.: [:create, :read] => {:create=>true, :read=>true}
        ability_hash.each do |action, true_or_false|
          @ability_result[action] = ability.can?(action, target)
        end
        !ability_hash.diff(@ability_result).any?
      end

      failure_message_for_should do |user|
        ability_hash,options = expected
        ability_hash         = {ability_hash => true} if ability_hash.is_a? Symbol # e.g.: :create
        ability_hash         = ability_hash.inject({}){|_, i| _.merge({i=>true}) } if ability_hash.is_a? Array # e.g.: [:create, :read] => {:create=>true, :read=>true}
        target               = options[:for]
        message              = "expected User:#{user} to have ability:#{ability_hash} for #{target}, but actual result is #{@ability_result}"
      end

      #to clean up output of RSpec Documentation format
      description do 
        if ability_hash.length == 1
          "have ability #{expected.to_s.match(/(:[^ ]*)/)[1]} for #{expected.to_s.match(/<([^ ]*)/)[1]}"
        else
          "have abilities #{expected.to_s.match(/\[(\[[^\]]*\]),/)[1]} for #{expected.to_s.match(/<([^ ]*)/)[1]}"
        end
      end
    end

Cucumber

By default, Cucumber will ignore the rescue_from call in the ApplicationController and report the CanCan::AccessDenied exception when running the features. If you want full integration testing you can change this behavior so the exception is caught by Rails. You can do so by setting this in the env.rb file.

# in features/support/env.rb
ActionController::Base.allow_rescue = true

Alternatively, if you don't want to allow rescue on everything, you can tag individual scenarios with @allow-rescue tag.

@allow-rescue
Scenario: Update Article

Here the rescue_from block will take effect only in this scenario.

Controller Testing

If you want to test authorization functionality at the controller level one option is to log-in the user who has the appropriate permissions.

user = User.create!(:admin => true) # I recommend a factory for this
session[:user_id] = user.id # log in user however you like, alternatively stub `current_user` method
get :index
assert_template :index # render the template since he should have access

Alternatively, if you want to test the controller behavior independently from what is inside the Ability class, it is easy to stub out the ability with any behavior you want.

def setup
  @ability = Object.new
  @ability.extend(CanCan::Ability)
  @controller.stubs(:current_ability).returns(@ability)
end

test "render index if have read ability on project" do
  @ability.can :read, Project
  get :index
  assert_template :index
end

If you have very complex permissions it can lead to many branching possibilities. If these are all tested in the controller layer then it can lead to slow and bloated tests. Instead I recommend keeping controller authorization tests light and testing the authorization functionality more thoroughly in the Ability model through unit tests as shown at the top.

Additional Docs

• Defining Abilities
• Checking Abilities
• Debugging Abilities
• Ability Precedence