Testing file uploads in Ruby on Rails

In the current version of Ruby on Rails (1.0), testing file uploads is a little involved. It’s possible but involves writing your own code to handle the process. Cue my first Rails patch. In Rails 1.1 you will be able to put spongebob.png in a test/fixtures/files directory, and add the “upload” to the params of your test request:

I have a controller: file_upload_controller.rb and an upload action my functional test fails with the following error:

NoMethodError (undefined method `original_filename’ for #): /app/controllers/file_upload_controller.rb:7:in `upload’

The only thing I do in the action is to access the original_filename:

def upload
  file = params[:file]
  print file.original_filename
end

Am I doing something wrong?

helloworld

Saturday 08 April
12:05 PM

It looks like something is wrong, but not in the code you’ve shown me. The error indicates the object is a String. In a test file upload, it should be an instance of ActionController::TestUploadedFile^*. That would explain why calling file.original_filename causes an error, but doesn’t explain why you get a String in the first place. What code do you have in the functional test?

See http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/TestUploadedFile.html

Jon Leighton

Saturday 08 April
12:13 PM

It’s a bug http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/4635

helloworld

Saturday 08 April
12:15 PM

The functional test:

post 'file/upload', :file =&gt; fixture_file_upload('/image.png', 'image/png')

helloworld

Saturday 08 April
12:20 PM

This looks good, but the img_tag form can upload text fields as well as file objects, how would we use ActionController::TestUploadedFile to test a form_tag that doesn’t just upload files..for example I was mucking around with migrations and accidentally blew away my database…what I want to do is create a test that will automatically rebuild my database, uploading files to the FS and populating my database at the same time…any ideas on how to do this??? cheers

Dazza

Wednesday 19 April
03:10 AM

I was having the same problem the I noticed that the form I was creating wasn’t didn’t have multipart set to true:

'create_image'}, :multipart =&gt; true) %&gt;

Hope this helps, -dustin

Dustin Withers

Wednesday 26 April
09:20 PM

Dustin – you da man.

Was having this problem… that ‘multipart’ thing was the trick.

I just ended up hardcoding it in html:

Fez

Saturday 17 June
06:54 AM

I finally got a good functional test working for attachment_fu. Below is a snippet:

http://pastie.caboo.se/66182

All of the details are in this post:

http://www.subelsky.com/2007/05/functional-testing-for-attachment-fu.html#links

Mike Subelsky

Wednesday 30 May
07:24 PM

Testing file uploads in Ruby on Rails

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