Authentication from Scratch: current_user returns nil

Question

I am building a role based authentication system from scratch using a Treehouse's course User Authentication in Rails as a general guide along with some other resources. The app I am building is a simple blog.

I posted a previous issue in Stack Overflow concerning an undefined method for 'admin?' for nil:NilClass that I suspected had more to do with the method following it...current_user. You can see my post here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29522637/testing-admin-authorization

It turns out that I am correct. I found the same failure popping up in my posts_controller_spec.rb as well, except the failure message is undefined method for 'posts' for nil:NilClass.

I tried many combos such as signing in/logging in a user before running the specs and simple syntax changes, but still find I'm at a loss. Any insight is very appreciated.

Here is my code.

Failures:

  1) PostsController#GET create with valid attributes 
     Failure/Error: post :create, post: attributes_for(:post)
     NoMethodError:
       undefined method `posts' for nil:NilClass
     # ./app/controllers/posts_controller.rb:16:in `create'
     # ./spec/controllers/posts_controller_spec.rb:40:in `block (4 levels) in <top (required)>'

spec/controllers/posts_controller_spec.rb

before :example do
        allow(controller).to receive(:require_auth)
        @user = build_stubbed(:user)
        sign_in(@user)
    end

    describe "#GET index" do
        before :each do
            @post = create(:post)
            get :index
        end

        it { expect(response).to be_success }
            it { expect(assigns(:posts)).to eq([@post]) }
    end


    describe '#GET show' do
        before :each do
            @post = create(:post)
            get :show, id: @post.id
        end

        it { expect(assigns(:post)).to eq(@post) }
    end



    describe '#GET create' do
        context 'with valid attributes' do
          before :each do
            post :create, post: attributes_for(:post), id: @user.id
          end

             it { expect(Post.count).to eq(1) }
             it { expect(flash[:success]).to eq('Your post has been saved!') }
             it { expect(assigns(:post)).to be_a(Post) }
             it { expect(assigns(:post)).to be_persisted }
             it { expect(response).to redirect_to Post.first }

             it "creates a post by the current_user" do
                @post = Post.last
                expect(@post.user).to eq(@user)
            end
        end

 #more tests.....

app/controllers/application_controller.rb

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  # Prevent CSRF attacks by raising an exception.
  # For APIs, you may want to use :null_session instead.
  protect_from_forgery with: :exception
  add_flash_types :success, :error

  private
  helper_method :current_user
  helper_method :logged_in?

  def logged_in?
    current_user
  end

  def current_user
    @current_user ||= User.find(session[:user_id]) if session[:user_id]
    rescue ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound
  end

  def require_auth
    unless current_user
      session[:target] = request.fullpath
      redirect_to new_user_session_path, 
        notice: "You must be logged in to access that page."
    end
  end

  def require_admin
    unless current_user.admin?
      redirect_to post_path, 
        notice: "Access denied."
    end
  end


end

app/controllers/posts_controller.rb

class PostsController < ApplicationController

    before_action :require_auth, expect: [:index, :show]

     #some methods...

    def create
        @post = current_user.posts.new(post_params)

        if @post.save
            flash[:success] = "Your post has been saved!"
            redirect_to @post
        else
            flash[:error] = "There was an error saving your post."
            redirect_to new_post_path
        end
    end

    #some more methods...

end

Answer 1 · 2015-04-10T02:41:44Z

April 10, 2015 2:41am

It appears to be a typo in your posts_controller:

before_action :require_auth, expect: [:index, :show]

Should be:

before_action :require_auth, except: [:index, :show]

except instead of expect

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Joshua Shroy

Joshua Shroy

Authentication from Scratch: current_user returns nil

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Brandon Barrette

Brandon Barrette

Joshua Shroy

Joshua Shroy