Hartl's Tutorial Section 5.3.2: Rails Routes

Question

I've been following along in the tutorial exactly as it has been written. So far everything has gone without a hitch, until this section.

I was supposed to change the "GET" statements in the config/routes.rb file to the following:

SampleApp::Application.routes.draw do
  root to: 'static_pages#home'

  match '/help',    to: 'static_pages#help'
  match '/about',   to: 'static_pages#about'
  match '/contact', to: 'static_pages#contact'

This was supposed to make the tests pass. They do not pass. They continue to fail with the following error as one of the 9 similar errors:

Failure/Error: visit about_path
NameError:
   undefined local variable or method 'about_path' ....

I have no idea how to get this to pass so that I can move on. What did I miss? What did Hartl miss? Other people who have asked this question never got an answer that made any sense or even worked when tried.

Before anyone asks:

All versions of Rails, Ruby and other installed components are the exact same versions used in the tutorial as it is written today 2012-10-05. Everything matches the tutorial perfectly.

UPDATE: Here is the current static_pages_spec.rb file

require 'spec_helper'

describe "Static pages" do

  describe "Home page" do

    it "should have the h1 'Sample App'" do
      visit root_path
      page.should have_selector('h1', text: 'Sample App')
    end

    it "should have the base title" do
      visit root_path
      page.should have_selector('title',
                        text: "Ruby on Rails Tutorial Sample App")
    end

    it "should not have a custom page title" do
      visit root_path
      page.should_not have_selector('title', text: '| Home')
    end
  end

  describe "Help page" do

    it "should have the h1 'Help'" do
      visit help_path
      page.should have_selector('h1', text: 'Help')
    end

    it "should have the title 'Help'" do
      visit help_path
      page.should have_selector('title',
                        text: "Ruby on Rails Tutorial Sample App | Help")
    end
  end

  describe "About page" do

    it "should have the h1 'About'" do
      visit about_path
      page.should have_selector('h1', text: 'About Us')
    end

    it "should have the title 'About Us'" do
      visit about_path
      page.should have_selector('title',
                    text: "Ruby on Rails Tutorial Sample App | About Us")
    end
  end

  describe "Contact page" do

    it "should have the h1 'Contact'" do
      visit contact_path
      page.should have_selector('h1', text: 'Contact')
    end

    it "should have the title 'Contact'" do
      visit contact_path
      page.should have_selector('title',
                    text: "Ruby on Rails Tutorial Sample App | Contact")
    end
  end
end

Rake Routes results:

   root  /                  static_pages#home
   help  /help(.:format)    static_pages#help
   about  /about(.:format)   static_pages#about
   contact  /contact(.:format) static_pages#contact

Answer 1

Try changing in your routes.rb your line to:

match '/about',   to: 'static_pages#about', as: 'about'

and also you should reload Spork in order to changes apply. You can also add:

load "#{Rails.root}/config/routes.rb"

into your Spork.each_run block in order to reload routes each time you run Spork.

Answer 2

Reloading spork worked for me.

Answer 3

Hi try to add this on your spec.

describe "Static pages" do
include Rails.application.routes.url_helpers
.......

Answer 4

I think you should type in the browser

http://localhost:3000/

instead of http://localhost:3000/static_pages/home to get the home page for example. I think the problem is not the code but rather how to access the page. In the sections prior to 5.3.2 in the tutorial, you needed to visit localhost:3000/static_pages/home to access the homepage. After you follow instructions in 5.3.2, you only need to type http://localhost:3000/.

Answer 5

I just encountered this error, and had some help fixing this. I had mistakenly added the signin_path and signup_path on the layouts/_header.html.erb and static_pages/home.html.erb, respectively. This had EVERY page confused as to what the signin_path was.

The other issue I had made an error on was the root path. If you run 'rm public/index.html' from your sample app directory, 'root 'static_pages#home' in routes.rb, should work. The problem is that things in the public directory override any other part of your app as you customize it. Hope this helps you like it helped me :)

Answer 6

Named routes are not available in specs by default. Add the following code to the spec_helper.rb file:

RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.include Rails.application.routes.url_helpers
end