Rails Fixtures not loading with rspec

So, I'm trying to learn the rspec BDD testing framework in the context of a rails project. The problem I'm having is that I can't, for the life of me, get my fixtures to load properly in rspec descriptions.

Disclaimer: Yes, there are better things than fixtures to use. I'm trying to learn one thing at a time, here (specifically rspec) before I go play with associated tools like factory-girl, mocha, auto-test, etc. As such, I'm trying to get the dead-simple, if clunky, fixtures working.

Anyway, here's the code:

/test/fixtures/users.yml -

# password: "secret"
foo:
  username: foo
  email: foo@example.com
  password_hash: 3488f5f7efecab14b91eb96169e5e1ee518a569f
  password_salt: bef65e058905c379436d80d1a32e7374b139e7b0

bar:
  username: bar
  email: bar@example.com
  password_hash: 3488f5f7efecab14b91eb96169e5e1ee518a569f
  password_salt: bef65e058905c379436d80d1a32e7374b139e7b0

/spec/controllers/pages_cont开发者_JAVA百科roller_spec.rb -

require 'spec/spec_helper'

describe PagesController do
  integrate_views
  fixtures :users
  it "should render index template on index call when logged in" do
    session[:user_id] = user(:foo).id
    get 'index' 
    response.should render_template('index')
  end
end

And what I'm getting when I run 'rake spec' is:

NoMethodError in 'PagesController should render index template on index call when logged in'
undefined method `user' for #<Spec::Rails::Example::ControllerExampleGroup::Subclass_1:0x2405a7c>
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/action_controller/test_process.rb:511:in `method_missing'
./spec/controllers/pages_controller_spec.rb:7:

That is, it's not recognizing 'user(:foo)' as a valid method.

The fixtures themselves must be ok, since when I load them into the development db via 'rake db:fixtures:load', I can verify that foo and bar are present in that db.

I feel like I'm missing something obvious here, but I've been tearing my hair out all day to no avail. Any help would be appreciated.

If you define fixtures as 'users', then the way to use them is via the method with the same name:

describe PagesController do
  integrate_views
  fixtures :users
  it "should render index template on index call when logged in" do
    session[:user_id] = users(:foo).id
    get 'index'
    response.should render_template('index')
  end
end

The singular is only relevant to the class itself (User). Hope you still have some hair left if this is just a one letter bug.

If you want to set up your fixtures globally, inside your spec_helper or rails_helper you can add:

RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.global_fixtures = :all
end

It took me a really long time to figure this out myself.

# spec/rails_helper.rb

RSpec.configure do |config|
#  config.file_fixture_path = Rails.root / 'test' / 'fixtures' # <= incorrect
  config.fixture_path = Rails.root / 'test' / 'fixtures'

then, as stated on other comments, use

RSpec.describe 'Events API', type: :request do
  fixtures :events