Rails/Rspec Make tests pass with http basic authentication

For me, with Rails 6, I need keyword arguments for rspec get method like .. get route, params: params, headers: headers

Auth Helper method

module AuthHelper
  def headers(options = {})
    user = ENV['BASIC_AUTH_USER']
    pw = ENV['BASIC_AUTH_PASSWORD']

    { HTTP_AUTHORIZATION: ActionController::HttpAuthentication::Basic.encode_credentials(user,pw) }
  end
  def auth_get(route, params = {})
    get route, params: params, headers: headers
  end
end

and the rspec request test.

describe HomeController, type: :request do    
  include AuthHelper

  describe "GET 'index'" do
    it "should be successful" do
      auth_get 'index'
      expect(response).to be_successful
    end
  end

end

Sorry I didn't seek enough, the solution seems to be the following:

describe "GET 'index'" do
  it "should be successful" do
    @request.env["HTTP_AUTHORIZATION"] = "Basic " + Base64::encode64("username:password")
    get 'index'
    response.should be_success
  end
end

Some answers suggest to set request.env which is unsafe, because request can be nil and you will end up with private method env' called for nil:NilClass, especially when run single tests with rspec -e

Correct approach will be:

def http_login
  user = 'user'
  password = 'passw'
  {
    HTTP_AUTHORIZATION: ActionController::HttpAuthentication::Basic.encode_credentials(user,password)
  }
end

get 'index', nil, http_login

post 'index', {data: 'post-data'}, http_login

Update (2013): Matt Connolly has provided a GIST which also works for request and controller specs: http://gist.github.com/4158961

---

Another way of doing this if you have many tests to run and don't want to include it everytime (DRYer code):

Create a /spec/support/auth_helper.rb file:

module AuthHelper
  def http_login
    user = 'username'
    pw = 'password'
    request.env['HTTP_AUTHORIZATION'] = ActionController::HttpAuthentication::Basic.encode_credentials(user,pw)
  end  
end

In your test spec file:

describe HomeController do
  render_views

  # login to http basic auth
  include AuthHelper
  before(:each) do
    http_login
  end

  describe "GET 'index'" do
    it "should be successful" do
      get 'index'
      response.should be_success
    end
  end

end

Credit here